Conclusions

The new virus outbreak has challenged the economic, medical and public health infrastructure of China and to some extent, of other countries especially, its neighbours. Time alone will tell how the virus will impact lives in India. More so, future outbreaks of viruses and pathogens of zoonotic origin are likely to continue. Therefore, apart from curbing this outbreak, efforts should be made to stop this virus rather than spreading it.

Several years after the global SARS epidemic, the current SARS-C0V-2/COVID-19 pandemic has served as a reminder of how novel pathogens can rapidly emerge and spread through the human population and eventually cause severe public health crises. Further research should be conducted to establish animal models for SARS-CoV-2 to Investigate replication, transmission dynamics, and pathogenesis in humans. This may help develop and evaluate potential therapeutic strategies against zoonotic COV epidemics. Present trends suggest the occurrence of future outbreaks of CoVs due to changes in the climate, and ecological conditions may be associated with human-animal contact. Live animal markets, such as the Huanan South China Seafood Market, represent ideal conditions for interspecies contact of wildlife with domestic birds, pigs, and mammals, which substantially increases the probability of interspecies transmission of COV infections and could result in high risks to humans due to adaptive genetic recombination in these viruses.