An academic view - What's it about Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2?

SARS-CoV-2 the newest member of the Coronaviridae family. There is so much going on at the moment and so many news are spread, so let me add to this. Within my post, I tried to maintain an academic level of reliability and rigour without spreading fake news or similar stuff. I'll give you guys my sources at the end of the post.

So what is it? Basically, SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the Coronaviridae family, which is called this based on their look. Corona is the spanisch word for crown and the virus looks like having little crowns around the surface - those are the proteins that bind to the host.

That's a model taken from the CDC of the new SARS-CoV-2. The virus is directly linked to SARS-CoV-1 (the SARS version that was the only one before the new was discovered) and MERS-CoV. From the genetical aspect, the virus is highly variable, which means that the genoms mutate in a high fashion. This is further fostered by the single stranded RNA within the virus in stead of a double-stranded DNA genom. Due to this, there is a high mutation rate of the virus, also producting more non-infectious particles, but due to the high rate, new and mutated versions can spread fast. (Steinhauer, 1987)

So, looking more at the relations, scientists found out that there exist two Coronaviridae family members that originate from bats and are genetically identical to 80-90% with the current SARS-CoV-2 virus. (mainly bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21) The scientiests showed that those bat-related virueses can be seen as sisters of the current pandemic virus. Further, they also found relations to snakes being present within the region of Wuhan where the virus originates, at least based on current research. The relation to snakes is, other than the one to bats, currently highly discussed in the academic world. (Ji et al. 2020)

Following different sources, mainly the John Hopkins institute and the Robert-Koch institute, the virus has an R0 value of 2.2 - 3. Meaning that one person infects 2.2 to 3 other people leading so a low exponential spread. In combination with the long incubation of 14 days, this can have a wide reaching infection wave, as it is currently happening. So please out there, follow the suggestions, stay at home and keep a distance of at least 2 meters to other people. It is not intended to stop the spread and let the virus "die out", but to slow down the infection wave and give health care the time to care for each individual.

And now, a little conspiracy to think about: In China, leaders spoke about the need to cocntain the virus and setup a system to prevent similar epidemics. Further, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive: "Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus". Sounds interesting, are there problems related to security in level 4 microbiology labs? Is there a possibility that viruses could escape from labs? (NYPost, 2020)

I'll let this to you guys out there. What is true is that the only level 4 lav in China that can handle those viruses is based in Wuhan. After the SARS epidemy in 2003, China started to build the Institute in Wuhan, which was finished and opened in 2015. (Wuhan Institute of Virology, 2020)

In addition, a group of Indian scientists claimed to have found similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and HIV - biologically not possible, as the belong to completely different families with different genoms. This lead to the hypothesis that the virus could have been engineered by humans. (qz.com, 2020; Pradhan et al. 2020) The paper later was withdrawn by the researchers in response to comments received from the research community. (Statnews, 2020; bioRxiv, 2020) Scientiest around the world rejected the theory of an engineered virus and state that the virus originated in wildlife. (Sciencemag, 2020)

If you are curious, you can view an animation of the genomic variation and mutation of SARS-CoV-2 over the last few months here: https://nextstrain.org/ncov

Stay save, stay healthy and stay at home.

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References:

bioRxiv (2020): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v2 (Accessed: 22.03.2020)

CDC (2020): https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23312 (Accessed: 22.03.2020)

D. A. Steinhauer, J. J. Holland (1987): Rapid evolution of RNA viruses. In: Annu Rev Microbiol. (1987), Band 41, S. 409–33

Ji, W. et al. (2020) ‘Cross-species transmission of the newly identified coronavirus 2019-nCoV’, JOURNAL OF MEDICAL VIROLOGY, 92(4), pp. 433–440. doi: 10.1002/jmv.25682.

NYPost (2020): https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked-from-a-lab/ (Accessed: 22.03.2020)

Prashant Pradhan et al. (2020); Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871

Sciencemag (2020): https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/scientists-strongly-condemn-rumors-and-conspiracy-theories-about-origin-coronavirus (Accessed: 22.03.2020)

Statnews (2020): https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/03/retraction-faulty-coronavirus-paper-good-moment-for-science/ (Accessed: 22.03.2020)

qz.com (2020): https://qz.com/1805422/wuhan-virology-lab-unable-to-quell-china-coronavirus-conspiracies/ (Accessed: 22.03.2020)

Wuhan Institute of Virology (2020): http://english.whiov.cas.cn/About_Us2016/Brief_Introduction2016/ (Accessed: 22.03.2020)