Trending outbreak of corona virus sars-cov-2: a review

Abstract

The capital of Hubei province in China, Wuhan city, suddenly turned out to be the main hub of an outburst of pneumonia of unknown cause in December, 2019. Soon later in January 2020, the Chinese scientists found out a novel category of virus named corona virus, also called as severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; previously known as 2019-nCoV), from these pneumonia patients.1 A new name for this epidemic disease caused by 2019-nCoV was announced by World Health Organization(WHO) on 11th February 2020, as corona virus disease-19 (COVID-19).2Among the chief micro-organisms or pathogens that majorly aim the human respiratory system are the corona virus group of viruses. There also have been previous outbreaks of corona viruses (CoVs) in past years. These include the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV. These outbreaks too have been earlier considered as a reason that caused immense threat to the well-being of society and public life.3 It was believed that the source and initiation of this virus is probably from a zoonotic transmission related with a huge seafood market. There was tradeoff of live animals in these markets too. Soon later it was evident that person-to-person transmission was possible with this virus too. The clinical symptoms associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection shows wide variation of manifestations, ranging from asymptomatic infection (commonly called as the silent carriers), mild upper respiratory tract illness, severe pneumonia, respiratory collapse and even death.1 As per a study conducted by Chen, hospital-associated transmission of this infection was identified to be around 41%.2 Considering rapid increase in incidence rate of SARSCoV-2 infection, transmission by silent carriers & also transmission from human to human, lead it into next pandemic disease. They also studied the microbiological nature of the virus and suggested that it is similar to the corona virus variety circulating in horseshoe bats. Further analysis based on ORF1a/1b, S and N genes proposes that SARS-CoV-2 is possibly a novel corona virus that was autonomously acquainted from animals to humans. Certain investigatory findings suggest that, this infection may have been instigated from bats or bat droppings accompanying with polluted resources in the Wuhan seafood market region.2