Dermatologic Therapy
Abdelmaksoud, Ayman; Kroumpouzos, George; Jafferany, Mohammad; Lotti, Torello; Sadoughifar, Roxanna; Goldust, Mohamad
Introduction
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana
Coronaviruses were considered relatively harmless pathogens until they caused three major outbreaks of severe respiratory disease in the last 20 years. The current pandemic has compelled us to scrutinize the break-outs that have occurred in the past and imposed global threat time and again. Coronavirus is a single stranded enveloped RNA virus that belongs to the subfamily Coronavirinae. Based on the genomic structure, 4 subtypes of this zoonotic virus have been recognized- alphacoronavirus, betacoronavirus, gammacoronavirus and delta coronavirus. Alphacoronavirus and beta coronaviruses infect only mammals whereas gammacoronavirus and delta coronavirus infect mainly birds. Out of the former group, seven viruses are known to cause human disease. Four of these viruses, HCoV 229E, HCoV OC43, HCoVNL63 and HCoVHKU1, cause mild infections whereas three, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and the recently identified SARS-CoV2 cause serious respiratory illnesses in humans (Marra et al., 2003).
Keywords
Epidemiology