Hong Kong has been recently attacked by the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). In late January 2020, it’s shown a steadily increasing trend of confirmed cases. There is a 257 in total infected cases confirmed including 4 deaths until 20th of March 2020. To prevent further outbreak of COVID-19, this article discusses the current understanding of COVID-19 and compares with the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in 2003 of Hong Kong from the causes, transmission, symptoms, diagnosis, treatments and preventions to study for an applicable measurement to control COVID-19.

Introduction

An outbreak of pneumonia with unknown etiology emerged in Wuhan of Hubei Province, China on December in 2019. Chinese scientists confirmed that a new coronavirus named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the cause of pneumonia outbreak. Now, this severe acute respiratory syndrome has been termed as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the World Health of Organization (WHO) [1]. Coronavirus is a group of viruses categorized into alphacoronavirus and betacoronavirus often causing cold and other mild upper respiratory tract infections in the human body. Alphacoronavirus consists of HCoV-229E and HCoV-NL63; Betacoronavirus consists of HCoVOC43 and HCoV-HKU1. Nevertheless, the rare form would be lethal such as SARS, MERS and COVID-19 [2]. SRAS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are betacoronavirus [3]. However, SARSr-CoVs belong to the subgenus Sarbecovirus (previously lineage B) of genus Betacoronavirus and occupy a unique phylogenetic position. It’s the most lethal [4]. On the 20th of March 2020, 178 countries or territories reported that there are 234073 in the total confirmed case with 9840 deaths globally; 81300 confirmed cases and 3253 deaths reported in China [5]; 257 confirmed case with 4 deaths in Hong Kong [6]. In response to the outbreak, we summarize the current knowledge of COVID-19 and compare it with the previous experiences of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong to study for an effective measurement to control the COVID-19 epidemic.