INTRODUCTION
Over the past 2 decades, coronaviruses (CoVs) have been associated with significant disease outbreaks in East Asia and the Middle East. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) began to emerge in 2002 and 2012, respectively. Recently, a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), emerged in late 2019, and it has posed a global health threat, causing an ongoing pandemic in many countries and territories (1).
Health workers worldwide are currently making efforts to control further disease outbreaks caused by the novel CoV (originally named 2019-nCoV), which was first identified in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, on 12 December 2019. On 11 February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the official designation for the current CoV-associated disease to be COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2. The primary cluster of patients was found to be connected with the Huanan South China Seafood Market in Wuhan (2). CoVs belong to the family Coronaviridae (subfamily Coronavirinae), the members of which infect a broad range of hosts, producing symptoms and diseases ranging from the common cold to severe and ultimately fatal illnesses, such as SARS, MERS, and, presently, COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 is considered one of the seven members of the CoV family that infect humans (3), and it belongs to the same lineage of CoVs that causes SARS; however, this novel virus is genetically distinct. Until 2020, six CoVs were known to infect humans, including human CoV 229E (HCoV-229E), HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV. Although SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV have resulted in outbreaks with high mortality, others remain associated with mild upper-respiratory-tract illnesses (4).
Newly evolved CoVs pose a high threat to global public health. The current emergence of COVID-19 is the third CoV outbreak in humans over the past 2 decades (5). It is no coincidence that Fan et al. predicted potential SARS- or MERS-like CoV outbreaks in China following pathogen transmission from bats (6). COVID-19 emerged in China and spread rapidly throughout the country and, subsequently, to other countries. Due to the severity of this outbreak and the potential of spreading on an international scale, the WHO declared a global health emergency on 31 January 2020; subsequently, on 11 March 2020, they declared it a pandemic situation. At present, we are not in a position to effectively treat COVID-19, since neither approved vaccines nor specific antiviral drugs for treating human CoV infections are available (7–9). Most nations are currently making efforts to prevent the further spreading of this potentially deadly virus by implementing preventive and control strategies.
In domestic animals, infections with CoVs are associated with a broad spectrum of pathological conditions. Apart from infectious bronchitis virus, canine respiratory CoV, and mouse hepatitis virus, CoVs are predominantly associated with gastrointestinal diseases (10). The emergence of novel CoVs may have become possible because of multiple CoVs being maintained in their natural host, which could have favored the probability of genetic recombination (10). High genetic diversity and the ability to infect multiple host species are a result of high-frequency mutations in CoVs, which occur due to the instability of RNA-dependent RNA polymerases along with higher rates of homologous RNA recombination (10, 11). Identifying the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the pathogen’s evolution will be helpful for disease surveillance (12), development of new targeted drugs, and prevention of further epidemics (13). The most common symptoms associated with COVID-19 are fever, cough, dyspnea, expectoration, headache, and myalgia or fatigue.
In contrast, less common signs at the time of hospital admission include diarrhea, hemoptysis, and shortness of breath (14). Recently, individuals with asymptomatic infections were also suspected of transmitting infections, which further adds to the complexity of disease transmission dynamics in COVID-19 infections (1). Such efficient responses require in-depth knowledge regarding the virus, which currently is a novel agent; consequently, further studies are required.
Comparing the genome of SARS-CoV-2 with that of the closely related SARS/SARS-like CoV revealed that the sequence coding for the spike protein, with a total length of 1,273 amino acids, showed 27 amino acid substitutions. Six of these substitutions are in the region of the receptor-binding domain (RBD), and another six substitutions are in the underpinning subdomain (SD) (16). Phylogenetic analyses have revealed that SARS-CoV-2 is closely related (88% similarity) to two SARS-like CoVs derived from bat SARS-like CoVs (bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21) (Fig. 1). Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 is genetically distinct from SARS-CoV (79% similarity) and MERS-CoV (nearly 50%) (17). COVID-19 is associated with afflictions of the lungs in all cases and generated characteristic chest computer tomography findings, such as the presence of multiple lesions in lung lobes that appear as dense, ground-glass opaque structures that occasionally coexist with consolidation shadows (18).
FIG 1  S-gene SplitsTree analysis. Shown is the spike (S) glycoprotein gene-based phylogenetic analysis (SplitsTree 4.0) of SAR-CoV-2 isolates (39 isolates). The SARS-CoV-2 isolates were analyzed with related CoVs from past human outbreaks and of animal origin, including MERS-CoV, bovine coronavirus, canine coronavirus, bat coronaviruses, bat-SL-SARS-CoV, and equine CoV. The analysis includes all five defined subgenera of Betacoronaviruses, namely, Sarbecovirus, Embecovirus, Merbecovirus, Nobecovirus, and Hibecovirus. The isolates in the gray area are from the current outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 from around the world. The nearest neighbors of SARS-CoV-2 are the bat-SL-CoV, encircled in yellow. Some therapeutic options for treating COVID-19 showed efficacy in in vitro studies; however, to date, these treatments have not undergone any randomized animal or human clinical trials, which limit their practical applicability in the current pandemic (7, 9, 19–21).
The present comprehensive review describes the various features of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 causing the current disease outbreaks and advances in diagnosis and developing vaccines and therapeutics. It also provides a brief comparison with the earlier SARS and MERS CoVs, the veterinary perspective of CoVs and this emerging novel pathogen, and an evaluation of the zoonotic potential of similar CoVs to provide feasible One Health strategies for the management of this fatal virus (22–367).