Résumé:
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) causing serious respiratory illness such as pneumonia and lung failure was firstly reported in Wuhan city, the capital of Hubei, China. The etiological agent of COVID-19 has been confirmed as a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is most likely transmitted from zoonotic coronaviruses, similar to SARS-CoV previously emerged in 2002. Within a few months of the first report, SARS-CoV-2 has spread across China and worldwide, reaching a pandemic level. As COVID-19 has triggered enormous human casualties and serious economic loss posing global threats, it is urgent to understand the ongoing situation and to build strategies to contain the viral spread. Currently, various diagnostic kits for testing COVID-19 are available and several repurposing therapeutics for COVID-19 have shown to be clinically effective. In addition, global institutions and companies have begun to develop vaccines for the prevention of COVID-19. The development of vaccines was initiated as soon as the genetic sequence of the virus was published, and has evolved at an unprecedented speed, with a first clinical trial launched in March 2020. One year later, more than a dozen of vaccines based on different concepts, with some having been evaluated only in clinical trials so far, are authorized under emergency procedures.
