Press Release on COVID-19
17.02.2020
A large family of viruses, coronaviruses (CoV) cause illnesses that range from the common cold to more severe illnesses like the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). Coronaviruses are zoonotic, which means that they spread between animals and humans and investigations have discovered that SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV were transmitted from civet cats to humans and from dromedary camels to humans respectively. The novel coronavirus, which is the strain that has the world currently on edge, has not been previously identified in humans. This new, or “novel” coronavirus is being referred to as COVID-19 and the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019.