The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1), a virus considered to have a zoonotic origin, is the aetiological agent for the infectious disease, SARS, which first emerged in 2002–2003 [1,2]. In December of 2019, another novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes coronavirus disease (COVID-19), appeared to have crossed species barriers to infect humans and was effectively transmitted from person to person, leading to an outbreak in Wuhan, China [3-5]. This virus subsequently spread worldwide, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic on 11 March 2020 [6]. To date, SARS-CoV-2 continues to pose a high global health and economy burden, and as at 3 May 2020, COVID-19 had affected 215 countries with over 3.35 million confirmed cases.