Vet World   Vol.14   January-2021  Article-25

The emerging SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2: An insight into the viruses zoonotic aspects

Background and Aim: Zoonotic coronavirus disease (COVID) has emerged in the past two decades and caused a pandemic that has produced a significant universal health alarm. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome-CoV (MERS-CoV) emerged in 2002 and 2012, respectively, provoking severe lower respiratory infection and deadly pneumonia. COVID-19 is a severe respiratory disease caused by the new strain of novel CoV (SARS-CoV-2). The zoonotic aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 in comparison to SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are highlighted in this article. COVID-19 has rapidly become a pandemic and has spread and infected millions of people worldwide. As of November 19, 2020, the date of submitting this review, the total CoV cases, deaths, and recovered patients are 56,828,218, 1,359,320, and 39,548,923, respectively. In conclusion, COVID-19 has particularly altered the opinion of the significance of zoonotic diseases and their animal origins and the intermediate reservoirs, which may be unknown wild animals. Genetically, the SARS-CoV-2 is related to the SARS-like bat CoVs and shares 85% identity with the SARS-CoV that is derived from the SARS-like bat CoVs. However, the virus is related to a lesser extent to the MERS-CoV. The SARS-CoV-2 uses the same receptor-binding domain receptor of the SARS-CoV – the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2; conversely, DPP4 (CD26). It has not been proved that the MERS-CoVs primary receptor is the receptor of the SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: Bats, coronavirus disease-19, pneumonia, RNA viruses, zoonotic.

How to cite this article: Al-Salihi KA, Khalaf JM (2021) The emerging SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2: An insight into the viruses zoonotic aspects, Veterinary World, 14(1): 190-199.

Received: 14-09-2020  Accepted: 07-12-2020     Published online: 23-01-2021

Corresponding author: Karima A. Al-Salihi   E-mail: kama-akool18@mu.edu.iq

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2021.190-199

Copyright: Al-Salihi and Khalaf, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.