A CORONA VIRUS: - ENEMY FOR WORLD

Ganesh Nanasaheb Kardile* and Adsul Pravin Ramdas

ABSTRACT

The coronavirus belongs to a family of viruses that may cause various symptoms such as pneumonia, fever, breathing difficulty, and lung infection.[1] These viruses are common in animals worldwide, but very few cases have been known to affect humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) used the term 2019 novel coronavirus to refer to a coronavirus that affected the lower respiratory tract of patients with pneumonia in Wuhan, China on 29 December 2019.[2–4] The WHO announced that the official name of the 2019 novel coronavirus is coronavirus disease (COVID-19).[4] And the current reference name for the virus is severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It was reported that a cluster of patients with pneumonia of unknown cause was linked to a local Huanan South China Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December 2019.[5] In response to the outbreak, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) dispatched a rapid response team to accompany health authorities of Hubei province and Wuhan city to conduct epidemiological and etiological investigations. The WHO confirmed that the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic was associated with the Huanan South China Seafood Marketplace, but no specific animal association was identified.[6] Scientists immediately started to research the source of the new coronavirus, and the first genome of COVID-19 was published by the research team led by Prof. Yong-Zhen Zhang, on 10 January 2020.[7] Within 1 month, this virus spread quickly throughout China during the Chinese New Year – a period when there is a high level of human mobility among Chinese people. Although it is still too early to predict susceptible populations, early patterns have shown a trend similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses. Susceptibility seems to be associated with age, biological sex, and other health conditions.[8] COVID-19 has now been declared as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the WHO.[9]

Keywords: .