Epidemiology of COVID‑19: An updated review

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2), a zoonotic infection, is responsible for COVID‑19 pandemic and also is known as a public health concern. However, so far, the origin of the causative virus and its intermediate hosts is yet to be fully determined. SARS‑CoV‑2 contains nearly 30,000 letters of RNA that allows the virus to infect cells and hijack them to make new viruses. On the other hand, among 14 detected mutations in the SARS‑CoV‑2 S protein that provide advantages to virus for transmission and evasion form treatment, the D614G mutation (substitution of aspartic acid [D] with glycine [G] in codon 614 was particular which could provide the facilitation of the transmission of the virus and virulence. To date, in contrary to the global effort to come up with various aspects of SARS‑CoV‑2, there are still great pitfalls in the knowledge of this disease and many angles remain unclear. That’s why, the monitoring and periodical investigation of this emerging infection in an epidemiological study seems to be essential. The present study characterizes the current epidemiological status (i.e., possible transmission route, mortality and morbidity risk, emerging SARS‑CoV‑2 variants, and clinical feature) of the SARS‑CoV‑2 in the world during these pandemic.