Overview of the COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The novel coronavirus that caused pandemic in 2020 started from a number of cases of unexplained pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, in December of 2019. Unlike the other human coronavirus previously reported, this new strain of coronavirus is much more contagious and rapidly spread in the city of Wuhan and subsequently various regions of China from the epicenter of Wuhan. Within several weeks, many countries of Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania reported the confirmed cases with the worldwide total number quickly rising to over 5.35 million and more than 343,000 deaths on May 24, 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) initially named this novel coronavirus as "2019 Novel Coronavirus” (2019-nCoV) on January 12, 2020. National Health Commission of China named the pneumonia caused by 2019-nCoV as Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) on January 20, 2020. In the meantime, National Health Commission of China issued an announcement to include this disease in the category B infectious diseases as stipulated in the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, but to manage this disease according to Class A infectious diseases. On February 11, 2020, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of WHO, announced the revised name of the pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus as "Coronavirus Disease 2019” (COVID-19). At the same time, the International Committee for Virus Classification named the novel coronavirus "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2” (SARS-CoV-2). Given the high incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the rapid increase of the cases globally, WHO officially declared on March 11, 2020 in Geneva that the COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 has the characteristics of a global pandemic. At present, the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is still under investigation. © Henan Science and Technology Press 2020.