The COVID-19 outbreak that emerged in China has infected millions of people and killed thousands worldwide. Public health authorities are racing for the pathogen to be suppressed, but this is not the first time the planet has had to combat a modern coronavirus outbreak. Here's how the present scenario relates to previous epidemics.
The latest coronavirus was first documented in Wuhan, China, triggering a disease named COVID-19. It has now expanded to over 190 nations, including Japan, Italy, Iran, South Korea, and the United States.
The virus origins have not been verified, although early genetic research indicates that the pathogen emerged in bats and was then transmitted to an intermediary species before spilling into humans.
LANDOVER, MARYLAND - MARCH 30: Healthcare professionals prepare to screen people for the coronavirus at a testing site erected by the Maryland National Guard in a parking lot at FedEx Field March 30, 2020 in Landover, Maryland. The guard, in cooperation with the state of Maryland and Prince Georges County, said the site will be able to test about 100 people a day for COVID-19 if they have been recommended by a doctor. There has been 1413 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Maryland and 15 deaths since the start of the global pandemic.
SARS
In the Guangdong province of southern China, experts first reported in severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in November 2002. The coronavirus-induced viral respiratory disease spread to 26 countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia until it was identified in July 2003.
The infection is known to have transmitted from bats to civet cats, tiny weasel-like creatures, until the first human patient was bitten.
There were 8,098 confirmed cases of SARS during the epidemic and 774 fatalities. Infections were mainly spread person-to-person. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no confirmed SARS cases have been identified since 2004.
MERS
MERS, or respiratory syndrome in the Middle East, was first recorded in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. A coronavirus, a remote viral relative of SARS, is blamed for respiratory disease. It has expanded to 27 European, African, Asian, and North American countries.
MERS is a zoonotic virus, like many coronaviruses, indicating that it is spread between animals and humans. MERS have definitely migrated from bats into dromedary camels before leaping into people, according to scientists.
There have been 2,494 confirmed MERS cases since 2012, and 858 deaths from the virus. According to the World Health Organization, diseases are mainly induced by direct human-to-human communication.
What makes COVID-19 more dangerous than these two?
Latest experiments have shown that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is highly adapted for human ACE2 binding. Simulations of viral binding of various species to homologous ACE2 proteins demonstrated the preference for bats and human ACE2.
The initial preprint of the researchers' manuscript, made accessible online in March, was one of the first to computationally examine the high affinity or propensity of SARS-CoV-2 to bind with human ACE2.
"Beyond explaining the molecular mechanism of binding with ACE2, we also explored changes in the virus spike that could change its affinity with human ACE2," said researchers said.
The SARS-CoV-2 protein spike attachment to ACE2, situated in the upper respiratory tract and acts as an entry point for other coronaviruses, like SARS, was computer-modeled by the researchers. The team used a molecular simulation technique to compute the binding power and interactions of the viral protein's connection to ACE2.
Future studies on vaccine longevity and the propensity for the virus to propagate to other animals may be guided by recognizing the virus spike's binding actions with ACE2 and the virus resistance of these structural spike shifts.
"The computational workflow that we have established should be able to handle other receptor binding-mediated entry mechanisms for other viruses that may arise in the future," the researchers added.
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