A novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) causing pneumonia-associated respiratory syndrome

Abstract

By the end of 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed about an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, China. Some patients were linked to a seafood market, suggesting animal-to-human transmission, but, soon, human-tohuman transmission was confirmed. The pathogen was promptly identified as a novel coronavirus belonging to lineage B betacoronaviruses that also include severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which caused a pandemic in China in 2002/2003, and bat SARS-like coronaviruses. 1 Since 2012, the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection starting from Saudi Arabia has resulted in 2494 confirmed cases and 858 deaths in 27 countries, posing ongoing threat to global public health (https://www.who.int/ emergencies/mers-cov/en). As of 1 February 2020, there were 12,024 confirmed cases with Wuhan pneumonia and 259 deaths, of which 11,860 cases were found in Mainland China and 164 in 26 other countries and territories. The estimated case fatality rate is about 2%, which is much lower than that of SARS (9.6%), while its transmission rate (R0) is 2-3% (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus), similar to that of SARS (3%). Like SARS-CoV-infected individuals, patients infected with this novel betacoronavirus showed abnormal findings on chest computed tomography, along with common symptoms that include fever, cough, and myalgia, or fatigue, at the onset of illness. Still, all indications suggest that the acute respiratory syndrome of SARS is, so far, more severe than that manifested by the present pneumonia outbreak. 2 The novel coronavirus was denoted as "2019-nCoV" by WHO (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019) and the Wuhan pneumonia was named as "novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia (NCIP)" by Chinese scientists. 3 However, it will seem illogical if coronavirus is listed after NCIP, i.e., "novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia coronavirus (NCIP-CoV)". Therefore, we suggest renaming NCIP as "pneumonia-associated respiratory syndrome (PARS)" and 2019-nCoV as "PARS coronavirus (PARS-CoV)", similar to SARS-CoV, to retain equivalent terminology.

Recent advances and perspectives of nucleic acid detection for coronavirus

“…Until now, six human coronaviruses (HCoVs) have been identified, namely, HCoV-229E, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-NL63, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) [4]. In particular, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV once caused pandemic [5].…”

Rapid Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Using Reverse transcription RT-LAMP method

“…Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently emerged life-threatening viral pneumonia disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (named 2019-nCoV before February 11, 2020) (1). COVID-19 is spreading worldwide, and as of February 29, 2020, approximately 80,000 confirmed cases had been identified in the world.…”

Association of Population migration and Coronavirus Disease 2019 epidemic control

“…In December 2019, a cluster of patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology was reportedly linked to Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. [1][2][3][4] Soon after, it was confirmed that this pneumonia was caused by infection of a novel pathogen [5], Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), as recently named by the World Health Organization, and the disease caused by such virus infection, the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) [6]. In January 2020, a widespread outbreak of COVID-19 occurred following the beginning of the largest annual migration in China known as the Spring Festival migration.…”

“…The first order functions of time and R0 were obtained with the method of least square. Considering the objective first order function as aT+b=R0, where T was number of time windows from starting one, and a, b are parameters to be fitted, the sum of deviations squared from the given set of data was calculated by (2).…”