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Frontiers in Veterinary Science
Frontiers
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Abstract: |
The medical authority in China, especially in Wuhan city, reported on December 2019 a
large number of highly fatal, rapidly spreading viral pneumonia caused by an unknown
coronavirus. The common history of all the patients was their visiting a Wuhan’s whole
food store, where live animals and seafood are sold. Irrespective of the efforts of the
Chinese authorities, the virus spread rapidly all over the world by travelers, provoking
widespread attention by the media and panic. Many previous coronavirus epidemics
had been recorded, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East
respiratory syndrome (MERS), and the recently newly discovered epidemic is named
coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19). This disease is caused by SARS Coronavirus-2
(SARS-CoV-2), and this virus is antigenically related to the SARS virus (SARS-CoV),
which had been detected in 2002, depending on clinical, serological, and molecular
findings. There is rapid competition among the researchers to discover the source of
the virus, understand the mechanism of the disease development, establish treatment
strategies, and determine the factors affecting the incidence of infection and severity
of the disease, and focus on the production of a vaccine. Coronaviruses are a group
of single-stranded, positive-sense RNA genome viruses; its genome length varies from
26 to 32 kb. Coronavirus causes mild to severe respiratory disorders. In December
2019, several cases of pneumonia of unknown causes were found in Wuhan city, which
is located in the Hubei province in China. Chinese health authorities investigated the
problem and found that a new virus caused such infection and, using next-generation
sequencing, found the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). It has been transferred from
humans to humans and animals to humans (zoonotic). Coronaviruses cause multiple
respiratory problems, varying from common cold to severe infections such as SARS. General symptoms of infection include fatigue, cough, and breathing problems such as
shortness of breath, as described by World Health Organization. Serious cases may result
in pneumonia, renal failure, and even death. We address current information about the
new SARS Coronavirus-2 as well as the COVID-19 disease caused by it in this review.
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