Current knowledge of COVID-19: Advances, challenges and future perspectives

Yuhan Wu; Zhuobing Peng; Yongxue Yan; Jintao Hu; Yalong Wang; Xiaoyu Wang; Ruchao Peng; Daniel Watterson; Yi Shi

doi:10.1016/j.bsheal.2021.06.001

Current knowledge of COVID-19: Advances, challenges and future perspectives

Biosaf Health. 2021 Aug;3(4):202-209. doi: 10.1016/j.bsheal.2021.06.001. Epub 2021 Jun 4.

Authors

Yuhan Wu^{1

2}, Zhuobing Peng¹, Yongxue Yan³, Jintao Hu⁴, Yalong Wang⁵, Xiaoyu Wang⁶, Ruchao Peng⁷, Daniel Watterson⁸, Yi Shi⁷

Affiliations

¹ College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
² MGI, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518083, China.
³ Huitong Experimental Station of Forest Ecology, CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Shenyang 110164, China.
⁴ Melbourne School of Engineering, the University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia.
⁵ The State Key Laboratory of Membrane Biology, Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Science, School of Life Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁶ MOE Laboratory of Biosystem Homeostasis and Protection, College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
⁷ CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
⁸ Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia.

Abstract

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has already evoked massive influence. The global pandemic has been ravaging the whole world for a year, with the number of confirmed human infection cases over 150 million and a death toll exceeding 3 million. Although the genomic sequence of the cognate pathogen SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) has been quickly determined, there are still many unknown aspects, including the virus origin and evolution trend, and the effectiveness of current vaccines and drugs against the mutating virus. This review summarizes current knowledge and advances about COVID-19, including virus origin, transmission and infection, with the aim to improve the understanding of COVID-19 and provide a new perspective for future studies.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Transmission; Virus infection; Virus origin.

Publication types

Review