COVID-19: The third wave of coronavirus infection outbreak

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 poses a great public health crisis. As of December 2019, it has spread all over the world with cases reported in more than 100 countries and the number of infected individuals surpassing 1,000,000. On March 11 World Health Organization officially characterized the COVID-19 as a pandemic. Although genetic analysis revealed some similarities between the novel coronavirus and the causative agent of the 2002 SARS epidemic, both viruses have significant differences. Research done on SARS-CoV has greatly aided the understanding of SARS-CoV-2, as it served as a knowledge base and helped to identify the cell entry receptor and some other features of the disease, but not all of them. Several critical questions remain unanswered and specific therapeutics and vaccine candidates are lacking.