The viral, epidemiologic, clinical characteristics and potential therapy options for COVID-19: a review

C. Li, B.-H. Xu

Department of Medical Oncology, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China. xubinghe@medmail.com.cn

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• Infectious Diseases

Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection has rapidly spread all over the world, in just two months. As of 27 March, globally, 509,164 cases confirmed included 23,335 deaths in approximately 150 countries. Recently, WHO has defined COVID-19 as a global pandemic, and considerable researches have focused on the identification and prevention of SARS-CoV-2. As a result, accumulated publications successively reported their early findings, leading to the constant updating of information, which might make confusion for readers. Therefore, this review summarized the current researches about the genomic evolution, variation of SARS-CoV-2, and demonstrated its viral structure for pathogenesis. Meanwhile, we analyzed the epidemiologic and clinical characteristics of COVID-19, in order to provide recommendations for present clinical treatments and inspirations for potential therapy options.

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