Novel Coronavirus COVID-19: A General Overview for Emergency Clinicians and Current Scenario

Abstract

A cluster of pneumonia cases linked to the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) were announced by China at the end of December 2019. The current global situation, recent trends and ongoing progress in the containment and control of this epidemic, which has now spread 187 countries across the globe. A novel coronavirus virus (2019-nCov) has emerged in China, posing an International Public Health Emergency in a few weeks, and has recently become a very high-risk group by the World Health Organization (WHO). A third introduction of a highly pathogenic and large-scale corona virus disease in humans was the SARS- CoV-2 outbreak as a result of a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012. This virus was named Coronavirus-2 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) by the International Committee on Virus Taxonomy (ICTV) and Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) disease. Clinical symptoms of COVID-19 patients include fever, cough, fatigue, and a small number of patients with signs of gastrointestinal infection. SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are particularly pathogenic in humans and are associated with high mortality. In this review, the epidemiology, pathophysiology, transmission, and clinical characteristics, and discussed current treatment and scientific developments and management of the recently discovered COVID-19 are reviewed, with a focus on best practices and the public health complications.