Microbiology laboratory: A backbone for COVID management

Abstract

Over the past 2 decades, coronaviruses (CoVs) have been associated with significant disease outbreaks in East Asia and the Middle East. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) began to emerge in 2002 and 2012, respectively. Recently, a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), emerged in late 2019, and it has posed a global health threat, causing an ongoing pandemic in many countries and territories. CoVs belong to the family Coronaviridae (subfamily Coronavirinae), the members of which infect a broad range of hosts. SARS-CoV-2 is considered one of the seven members of the CoV family that infect humans, leading to a pandemic.