Current Status of Pandemic COVID-19: A Review

ABSTRACT

The severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is spreading worldwide rapidly from its original city of China. Corona virus has the presence of positive sense Ribonucleic acid (RNA) genetic material. The infection causes mild respiratory disease especially in humans across all age groups. The widespread distribution of corona virus in other organisms such as birds, livestock and mammals such as bats, pangolins etc. makes it an important pathogen of concern. It has also been reported the number of people that act as healthy carriers of the virus are approximately 2%, where they do not show any symptoms of the infection but act as a prime source of transmission. Transmission of the virus is usually through large droplets generated during sneezing and coughing and thus can remain viable for several days in favorable atmospheric conditions but can be controlled by the usage of disinfectants. World Health Organization recommends isolation as most efficacious method for the containment of patients that are affected by this virus. At present, there are no particular anti-viral medications or vaccines are correctly present to suppress this infection from spreading. However, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methods have proved to be effective for assessing viral RNA but may prove to be very time-consuming assay. Thus, as per the present scenario, more research should be carried out to develop a rapid, user-friendly, diagnostic assay which has high specificity and sensitivity at mass level screening thus enabling the further process of drug designing.