Coronavirus 2020: What is really happening and how to prevent it
The latest outbreak of Coronavirus in China has brought the virus into thelimelight again. Wuhan, China, remains the epicenter of this outbreak. Before weproceed further and discuss the virus and its recent outbreak in detail, it appearsmuch more prudent to create a general understanding of the reader about theCoronavirus. Hailing from a large family of viruses, Coronaviruses can causerespiratory illnesses. While the symptoms range from mild to moderate, mostpeople do get infected with this virus in their lifetime, but in severe cases, thevirus is known to be the reason behind pneumonia and bronchitis, a lowerrespiratorytract illnesses.While these viruses are shared among animals worldwide, yet only a handful ofthem is known to affect humans. The possibility of an animal to humantransmission is infrequent, but the virus has the potential to evolve to such anextent. This is precisely what happened when the Coronaviruses known to bringthe Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) and the Middle EastRespiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) affected and infected humans with thesesevere acute respiratory syndromes. The lastest form of these viruses has itsorigin in China.These Coronaviruses were first discovered in the 1960s; the earliest one’sinfected chickens: infectious bronchitis virus, later two other viruses werediscovered from the nasal cavities of humans and thus named humanCoronavirus 229E and OC43. A few other members of this family have alsobeen branded, including SARS-CoV, HCoV NL63, HKU1, MERS-CoV, andnow the 2019-nCoV. All most all of these have been linked to severe respiratorytract infections.
