A Review of SARS-CoV2: Compared With SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV

Huan Zhou; Junfa Yang; Chang Zhou; Bangjie Chen; Hui Fang; Shuo Chen; Xianzheng Zhang; Linding Wang; Lingling Zhang

doi:10.3389/fmed.2021.628370

A Review of SARS-CoV2: Compared With SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV

Front Med (Lausanne). 2021 Dec 7:8:628370. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.628370. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Huan Zhou^{1

2

3}, Junfa Yang⁴, Chang Zhou⁵, Bangjie Chen⁶, Hui Fang⁷, Shuo Chen⁵, Xianzheng Zhang⁴, Linding Wang⁵, Lingling Zhang⁴

Affiliations

¹ National Drug Clinical Trial Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China.
² School of Pharmacy, Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China.
³ School of Public Foundation, Bengbu Medical University, Bengbu, China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Anti-inflammatory and Immune Medicine, Ministry of Education, Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
⁵ Basic Medical Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
⁶ Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.
⁷ Department of Pharmacology, The Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading rapidly in China and the Chinese government took a series of policies to control the epidemic. Studies found that severe COVID-19 is characterized by pneumonia, lymphopenia, exhausted lymphocytes and a cytokine storm. Studies have showen that SARS-CoV2 has significant genomic similarity to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV), which was a pandemic in 2002. More importantly, some diligent measures were used to limit its spread according to the evidence of hospital spread. Therefore, the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) has been established by the World Health Organization (WHO) with strategic objectives for public health to curtail its impact on global health and economy. The purpose of this paper is to review the transmission patterns of the three pneumonia: SARS-CoV2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV. We compare the new characteristics of COVID-19 with those of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV.

Keywords: COVID-19; MERS-CoV; PHEIC 3; SARS-CoV; WHO.

Publication types

Review