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COVID-19 is not humanity’s first brush with a coronavirus outbreak. A related pathogen, SARS-CoV, first emerged in Foshan, China, in November 2002. In February 2003 the virus was transported to Hong Kong, and from there, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the disease it causes, spread globally. By May 2004, that epidemic was quelled. Almost a decade later, in April 2012, the first cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) occurred in Jordan. Countries in the region hosted persistent epidemics, and cases of MERS popped up in countries outside the Middle East. We can learn a lot about SARS-CoV-2 by comparing and studying the characteristics of these similar coronaviruses and the outbreaks they fueled.
SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the diverse family of coronaviruses that are enveloped, single-stranded RNA viruses. Among the four genera (alpha, beta, gamma, and delta), alpha and beta coronaviruses are the most relevant to public ...
