HISTORY OF COVID-19 AKA WUHAN VIRUS

THE HISTORY OF CORONAVIRUS

By – Mansi Sharma

It is well known now that the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that has caused a pandemic on our planet and has spread to more than 70 countries , emerged in the city of Wuhan , China in the year 2019 .

ORIGIN OF THE VIRUS

According to the journal Nature Medicine , this virus infact is the product of natural evolution . Contrary to the suspicions , analysis of its public genome sequence data found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory .

The first known severe illness caused by a coronavirus emerged with the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China . A second outbreak of severe illness began in 2012 in Saudi Arabia with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

INITIAL SPREAD OF NOVEL CORONA

On December 31 of last year , i.e 2019 , Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organisation of an outbreak of a novel strain of coronavirus causing severe illness , which was subsequently named SARS-CoV-2 .

The most likely origins for SARS-CoV-2 followed one of two possible scenarios.

In one scenario, the virus evolved to its current pathogenic state through natural selection in a non-human host and then jumped to humans. This is how previous coronavirus outbreaks have emerged, with humans contracting the virus after direct exposure to civets (SARS) and camels (MERS). The researchers proposed bats as the most likely reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 as it is very similar to a bat coronavirus.

In the other proposed scenario, a non-pathogenic version of the virus jumped from an animal host into humans and then evolved to its current pathogenic state within the human population.

Chances of second being low , it was concluded that it originated through first scenario , most likely . 

As of first week of July , 2020 nearly 11,100,100 cases have been documented , although many more mild cases have likely gone undiagnosed . Virus has killed more than 5,26,000 people till date .