Learning from SARS and MERS: COVID-19 reinfection where do we stand?

Learning from SARS and MERS: COVID-19 reinfection where do we stand?

Author(s)

Manaf Al-Qahtani

Abstract

Learning from SARS and MERS: COVID-19 reinfection where we stand? In the last 20 years, we had witnessed the emergence of the Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1), initially reported from Guangdong province, China in 2002, the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus (MERS-CoV) from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2012 and SARS-CoV-2 in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei province in China.

 SARSCoV-2 had caused an ongoing global pandemic of COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease-2019). These viruses are genetically related to the circulating seasonal human coronaviruses: alphacoronaviruses, NL63 and 229E, and betacoronaviruses, HKU1 and OC43. These viruses, mainly NL63 or 229E, show a seroprevalence of 75% and 65 % of children by 2.5–3.5 years of age [1]. In addition, these seasonal coronaviruses are the etiology of respiratory infection in 22- 25 % of adults with acute respiratory illness

Travel Medicine and infectious Disease

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2021.102024