The COVID-19 Pandemic and its impact on wildlife

Abstract

COVID-19 is possibly the greatest and most enormously significant crisis against humans in the planet's modern history. The group of Coronaviridae includes viruses with very long RNA genomes of up to 33,500 nucleotides. SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the Sarbecovirus family, with an approximate genome size of 30.000 nucleotides (Wu et al., 2020). SARS-CoV-2 has four main structural proteins: spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N). Additionally, some other non-structural proteins are encoded in the pp1a and pp1ab polyproteins, essential for viral replication (Wu et al., 2020; Baruah et al., 2020; Baruah et al., 2021; Sharma and Baruah, 2021). The coronavirus has upended our way of life, but it's also having a dramatic impact on animals across the globe too, from black rhinos being poached in Botswana to a coughing tiger in New York and emboldened goats on the streets of Wales.