International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | July 2020 | Vol 8 | Issue 7 Page 2730 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Sharma S et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2020 Jul;8(7):2730-2739 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Review Article An overview of corona virus disease 19 - COVID 19 Sarita Sharma, Pragati Rathod, Ujwala Ukey* INTRODUCTION Throughout history, nothing has killed more human beings than infectious diseases. Epidemics and pandemics have ravaged humanity throughout its existence, often changing the course of history and at times even signaling the end of entire civilization. Evolving, reemerging and adaptive pathogens have always been a constant threat to global public health. 1 One such threat that has created a great havoc and devastated mankind in the recent decades is Corona virus which is a family of enveloped RNA viruses that are distributed broadly among humans, other mammals, and birds which cause respiratory, enteric, hepatic, and neurologic diseases. 2,3 The outbreak caused by SARS CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2002-03 demonstrated that animal coronaviruses could jump the species barrier and turn into a pandemic threat infecting thousands of people across the globe and killing hundreds. Another highly pathogenic coronavirus was recognized a decade later in 2012 as MERS CoV (Middle East Respiratory syndrome) which caused explosive nosocomial transmission and more than 800 deaths in the middle-east till date. A third strain of coronavirus, SARS CoV 2 has been identified in the current outbreak which started in early December of 2019 in the city of Wuhan in the Hubei Province of China. Cases continued to increase exponentially affecting more than 210 countries of the world with number of cases and deaths exceeding that of China, which was the epicentre of the outbreak at first. 4 A brief timeline is seen in Figure 1. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Epidemiology Agent Coronaviruses, are spherical in shape with club- shaped spike projections emanating from the surface which look like halos or a crown under the electron microscope and hence the name coronavirus. 5 Coronavirus is an enveloped virus having non- segmented positive-sense RNA genome and belongs to the family Coronaviridae. 6,7 Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India Received: 05 May 2020 Accepted: 30 May 2020 *Correspondence: Dr. Ujwala Ukey, E-mail: drujwalachitre@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT A remerging infectious disease that has caught the entire world unaware. Coronavirus is an enveloped virus having non- segmented positive-sense RNA genome and belongs to the family Coronaviridae. Important modes of transmission are direct contact and respiratory droplets. Though the virus survives on environmental surfaces for varied period of time, it gets easily inactivated by chemical disinfectants .The major clinical features in uncomplicated cases include fever (88%), dry cough (67%), myalgia (14.9%) or fatigue (38%). In the absence of an effective treatment and vaccine, preventive measures like physical distancing, hand hygiene, following respiratory etiquettes & wearing mask assume great importance. Vigourous surveillance, contact tracing and containment can go a long way in controlling the spread of Covid 19. Keywords: COVID 19, Coronavirus, SARS CoV 2 sinus DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20202927