Internal medicine

Archaeology

Disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Outbreak

China

Virology

Geography

Betacoronavirus

Coronavirus

Pneumonia

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Medicine

New England Journal of Medicine

In December 2019, a cluster of patients with pneumonia of unknown cause was linked to a seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, China. A previously unknown betacoronavirus was discovered through the use of unbiased sequencing in samples from patients with pneumonia. Human airway epithelial cells were used to isolate a novel coronavirus, named 2019-nCoV, which formed a clade within the subgenus sarbecovirus, Orthocoronavirinae subfamily. Different from both MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, 2019-nCoV is the seventh member of the family of coronaviruses that infect humans. Enhanced surveillance and further investigation are ongoing. (Funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China and the National Major Project for Control and Prevention of Infectious Disease in China.).

A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019