Emerging epidemic coronavirus 2019
What are viruses?
The virus is a microscopic organism ( parasite), exit almost everywhere on our planet. All viruses are parasites. They can infect humans, animals Plant, fungi and even bacteria which means all types of life forms can be infected by a virus. Some viruses are deadly but some aren’t.
Viruses are much smaller than bacteria. Think of a virus as a tiny package jacketed in a protein coat. Viruses contain either RNA or DNA or both. Every molecule inside of a virus has an instruction book full of genetic information that provides instructions to host cells to what to make and when to make it. Simply when a virus hits a host cell and sends a small message “make more viruses”.
On the other hand, viruses do not contain ribosome so they don’t make proteins. In that sense, viruses totally depend on their host. So technically viruses are not alive because they need a host cell to live and replicate. A host can be an animal, plant, bacteria, etc.
Let's see what happen when a virus breaks into a host cell
As mentioned earlier, after contacting a host cell, the virus injects genetic materials into the host and take over the host cell’s function. Now host cell is infected by virus and continues to reproduce more viruses. Eventually, the host cell dies after making lots of copies of the virus so other host cells get infected very easily. However, the human body can get rid of some viruses on its own. Yet some viruses are a big challenge. Viruses can be very hard to treat, as they live inside cells that shelter them from medicines. But some medicines exist, called antivirals and they work in different ways, some are like interrupting to the virus to replicate or blocking the entry of a virus into a host cell. And the worst case is antibiotics do not work on viral diseases.
What are Coronaviruses?
Coronavirus is a common type of virus that usually causes mild illness, but can lead to serious conditions like pneumonia or bronchitis. Most of the people get infected by coronavirus at some point in their life and most of these infections are harmless. This virus can infect other animals in addition to humans.
Coronaviruses contain RNA genomes and there are two types of human coronavirus. Middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus(MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus(SARS-CoV).
SARS-CoV first appeared in 2002–2003 in China. This started as an unusual pneumonia and lead to life-threatening respiratory failures in some cases. This virus continuously spread in over 29 countries and infecting more than 8000 people and killing 800 of them.
MERS-(CoV) epidemic emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012 which experienced similar symptoms to SARS CoV and reached a higher death rate of 34%. But, unlike SARS CoV, this virus has been only limited to the middle east. In this case source of this MERS CoV was camels.
Now we are experiencing a new coronavirus that appeared early this January in Wuhan China called 2019n-CoV, similar illness to SARS and MERS CoVs. The source of this virus traces back to the seafood and animal market in Wuhan, China. Some Experts believe this virus starts to spreading to humans by consuming snake meat as Chinese people usually consumed. But the worst scenario is this newly identified coronavirus started to spread rapidly through human to human close contact. And now cases have been reported outside in china including Asia, the US, Europe, and Australia. So far all outside cases are seen to be in people who traveled recently to Hubei province and Wuhan. Luckily yet all recorded deaths are only in Hubei province, China. But this virus passed between people very easily so the scale of the outbreak is getting high day by day many experts reported.
Comparing to Previous SARS CoV death rate is still less. But the virus is spreading faster than SARS. Many experts including WHO worrying about the current situation.
Article by Kavindu Sri Supekshala Hettiarachchi |Resources from the Internet
