The human coronaviruses (HCoVs) and the molecular mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In humans, coronaviruses can cause infections of the respiratory system, with damage of varying severity depending on the virus examined: ranging from mild-to-moderate upper respiratory tract diseases, such as the common cold, pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure, and even death. Human coronaviruses known to date, common throughout the world, are seven. The most common-and least harmful-ones were discovered in the 1960s and cause a common cold. Others, more dangerous, identified in the early 2000s and cause more severe respiratory tract infections. Among these the SARS-CoV, isolated in 2003 and responsible for the severe acute respiratory syndrome (the so-called SARS), which appeared in China in November 2002, the coronavirus 2012 (2012-nCoV) cause of the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) from coronavirus, which exploded in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia, and actually SARS-CoV-2. On December 31, 2019, a new coronavirus strain was reported in Wuhan, China, identified as a new coronavirus beta strain ß-CoV from group 2B, with a genetic similarity of approximately 70% to SARS-CoV, the virus responsible of SARS. In the first half of February, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), in charge of the designation and naming of the viruses (i.e., species, genus, family, etc.), thus definitively named the new coronavirus as SARS-CoV-2. This article highlights the main knowledge we have about the biomolecular and pathophysiologic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2.

Special features of SARS-CoV-2 in daily practice.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (commonly known as SARS-CoV-2) is a novel coronavirus (designated as 2019-nCoV), which was isolated for the first time after the Chinese health authorities reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Optimal management of the Coronavirus Disease-2019 disease is evolving quickly and treatment guidelines, based on scientific evidence and experts' opinions with clinical experience, are constantly being updated. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern". The total lack of immune protection brought about a severe spread of the contagion all over the world. For this reason, diagnostic tools, patient management and therapeutic approaches have been tested along the way, in the desperate race to break free from the widespread infection and its fatal respiratory complications. Current medical knowledge and research on severe and critical patients' management and experimental treatments are still evolving, but several protocols on minimizing risk of infection among the general population, patients and healthcare workers have been approved and diffused by International Health Authorities.