COVID-19 Background2
2.1 Nature
The novel coronavirus disease, formally denoted as nCoV but later renamed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO), is a new strain of the larger coronavirus family (CoV) that causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). Prior to the pandemic, the COVID-19 strain had never been previously identified in humans [1]. Categorized as a zoonotic disease, the coronavirus pathogen is transmitted between animals and people specifically through pathogens shared with wild or domestic animals [2].
