Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the First Pandemic of the Twenty-First Century; Middle East Respiratory Syndrome; and the 2019–2020 Outbreak of 2019-nCoV

This chapter assesses Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which represented the first new viral pandemic of the 21st century. Beginning mysteriously in Southern China during November of 2002, this plague was brought under control by 2004, but only after spreading to thirty-three countries on five continents and infecting over eight thousand humans, seven-hundred and seventy-four of whom died. How the disease spread exemplifies the speed and breadth of viral migration today. Then, as mysteriously as it came, SARS disappeared. However, a closely related viruses, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), first emerged in the Arabian Peninsula in 2012 and COVID-19 emerged in China in 2019 with both spreading globally. SARS , MERS and CVID-19 are members of the coronavirus family. At present, distinct species of bats have been implicated as natural reservoir for SARS maintaining this viruses in the communities it occupies. Meanwhile, how MERS first infected humans and what the animal carrier is are not clear; the suspects are bats and camels. For COVET-19 bats and civets are the suspects