SARS-CoV-2: Jumping the Species Barrier, Lessons from SARS and MERS, Its Zoonotic Spillover, Transmission to Humans, Preventive and Control Measures and Recent Developments to Counter This Pandemic Virus

Abstract

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - Coronavirus-2) of the family Coronaviridae, appeared in Wuhan, Hubei province, China being its epicenter in December 2019. This disease was declared as posing Public Health International Emergency by World Health Organization on January 30, 2020, attained the status of a very high-risk category on February 29, and now having a pandemic status (March 11, 2020). COVID-19 has presently spread to more than 195 countries/territories while killing nearly 19,600 humans out of cumulative confirmed cases accounting to more than 430,000 within a short period of just a few weeks. The majority of deaths have been reported in Italy and China. Researchers worldwide are pacing with high efforts to counter the spread of this virus and to design effective vaccines and therapeutics/drugs. Few of the studies have shown the potential of animal-human interface and zoonotic links in the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Exploring the possible zoonosis and revealing the factors responsible for its initial transmission from animals to humans will pave ways to design and implement effective preventive and control strategies to counter COVID-19. The present review presents an overview of COVID-19 and the causative virus SARS-CoV-2, with particular emphasis on the role of animals and their jumping the cross-species barriers, experiences learned from SARS- and MERS-CoVs, zoonotic links, and spillover events, transmission to humans and rapid spread., highlighting in very brief the preventive and control measures along with a few of the recent research developments to counter this pandemic virus/disease.

COVID-19: animals, veterinary and zoonotic links

“…In a nutshell, bats appears as the natural reservoir or source of origin for SARS-CoV-2 that causes zoonotic infection in humans through an intermediate host yet to be deciphered with recent investigations on pangolins, ferrets and possibly snakes. However, the future explorations might reveal the actual intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2 responsible for zoonotic transmission (Almendros 2020a;Dhama et al 2020d;Shi et al 2020;Zhang et al 2020aZhang et al , 2020b.…”

Food products as potential carriers of SARS-CoV-2

“…Through phylogenesis, SARS-CoV-2 with 89% similarity, is correlated to SARS ( Jalava, 2020 ; Pressman, Naidu, & Clemens, 2020 ) Some recent investigations propose bats as a possibly original reservoir of the COVID-19 outbreaks, but the intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2 is secret. Several animals such as snakes, pangolins, turtles, and Pomeranian dogs, were suggested as a possible intermediate host of the novel coronavirus ( Dhama et al, 2020 ; Rodriguez-Morales et al, 2020 ).…”

Coronavirus Disease 2019 – COVID-19

“…Additionally, pigs are also found to be susceptible to infection with human SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, thus making this scenario a nightmare (109,137). It is only a matter of time that another zoonotic coronavirus results in an epidemic by 'jumping' the so-called species barrier (292).…”