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In humans, coronaviruses can cause infections of the respiratory system, with damage of varying severity depending on the virus examined: ranging from mild-to-moderate upper respiratory tract diseases, such as the common cold, pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure, and even death. Human coronaviruses known to date, common throughout the world, are seven. The most common—and least harmful—ones were discovered in the 1960s and cause a common cold. Others, more dangerous, identified in the early 2000s and cause more severe respiratory tract infections. Among these the SARS-CoV, isolated in 2003 and responsible for the severe acute respiratory syndrome (the so-called SARS), which appeared in China in November 2002, the coronavirus 2012 (2012-nCoV) cause of the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) from coronavirus, which exploded in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia, and actually SARS-CoV-2. On December 31, 2019, a new coronavirus strain was reported in Wuhan, China, identified as a new coronavirus beta strain ß-CoV from group 2B, with a genetic similarity of approximately 70% to SARS-CoV, the virus responsible of SARS. In the first half of February, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), in charge of the designation and naming of the viruses (i.e., species, genus, family, etc.), thus definitively named the new coronavirus as SARS-CoV-2. This article highlights the main knowledge we have about the biomolecular and pathophysiologic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last day of 2019 delivered the first report to the World Health Organization (WHO) about a group of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, China. Subsequent investigations identified the new comer, a novel coronavirus related to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and thus was termed as SARS-CoV-2. Being very contagious, the new virus led the era of "COVID-19" which is the acronym of "coronavirus disease 2019," evoking an imminent threat to global health security with unprecedented devastating challenges to human kind. In this article, we provide a molecular overview on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and summarize tremendous efforts that have been made to develop a rapid confirmatory diagnostic test for COVID-19. The diagnostic performances of the available tests are analyzed based on the best current information from the early research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]