Three Emerging Coronaviruses in Two Decades The Story of SARS, MERS, and Now COVID-19

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Jeannette Guarner, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2020-04-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc.
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © American Society for Clinical Pathology, 2020. All rights reserved.
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ajcp/aqaa029
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: American Journal of Clinical Pathology
• Volume: 153
• Issue: 4
• Start Page: 420
• End Page: 421
• Keywords: Pathology; Coronavirus; 2019-nCoV; SARS-CoV; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; MERS-CoV; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Science & Technology

Abstract

In the past two decades, the world has seen three coronaviruses emerge and cause outbreaks that have caused considerable global health consternation. Coronaviruses are enveloped, nonsegmented, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA viruses that have a characteristic appearance on electron microscopy negative staining Image 1. As a matter of fact, the characteristic electron microscopy appearance was the clue to amplify and sequence nucleic acids from Dr Urbani’s (one of the health care providers who died of severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] in 2003) respiratory specimen using a consensus coronavirus primer.1