Similarly, the destabilizing mutation near the phosphatase domain of nsp3 proteins in SARS-CoV-2 could indicate a potential mechanism that differentiates it from other CoVs (100). Even though the CFR reported for COVID-19 is meager compared to those of the previous SARS and MERS outbreaks, it has caused more deaths than SARS and MERS combined (101). Possibly related to the viral pathogenesis is the recent finding of an 832-nucleotide (nt) deletion in ORF8, which appears to reduce the replicative fitness of the virus and leads to attenuated phenotypes of SARS-CoV-2 (256).