Introduction

Genomic and structure

Epidemiology

Clinical characteristics

Treatments for 2019-nCoV

Discussion

Acknowledgement

References

Abstract

A novel coronavirus designated as 2019-nCoV hit the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late December 2019, and subsequently spread rapidly to all provinces of China and multiple countries. Up to 0:00 am February 9, 2020, a total of 37,287 cases have been confirmed infection of 2019-nCoV in China mainland, and 302 cases have also been cumulatively reported from 24 countries. According to the latest data, a total of 813 deaths occurred in China mainland, with the mortality reaching approximately 2.2%. At present, there is no vaccine or specific drugs for human coronavirus, so that it’s critical to understand the nature of the virus and its clinical characteristics to response to the 2019-nCoV outbreak. Thus, we summarize the not much but timely reports on the 2019-nCoV in the present study, briefly but comprehensively.

Introduction

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are enveloped, single positive stranded RNA virus, which belong to the subfamily Coronavirinae. The CoVs genome, ranging from 26 to 32 kilobases in length, is probably the largest viral RNA known (1,2). Previously, there are six CoVs known to cause human diseases and can be divided into low pathogenic and highly pathogenic CoVs (2,3). The low pathogenic CoVs, including 229E, HKU1, OC43 and NL63, account for 10% to 30% of upper respiratory tract infections and typically cause mild respiratory diseases (3,4). In contrast, the highly pathogenic CoVs, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) CoV, predominantly infect lower airways and cause fatal pneumonia (2,5).

SARS-CoV emerged as a new human infection in South China in November 2002 and ended in July 2003. It infected 8,096 people and caused 774 deaths with an overall mortality rate of about 9.6% (6,7). MERS-CoV, another highly pathogenic CoV, first emerged in Saudi Arabiawas, has caused a total of 2494 laboratory-confirmed cases and 858 deaths from 27 countries (mortality rate, 34.4%) since September 2012. (http://www.who.int/emergencies/mers-cov/en/) (8). These two highly pathogenic β-CoVs have posed a substantial threat to public health.