Editorial: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – advances in epidemiology, diagnostics, treatments, host-directed therapies, pathogenesis, vaccines, and ongoing challenges

Over the past year, the world has witnessed an unprecedented nightmare scenario of an explosive pandemic outbreak of novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) [1,2]. The number of COVID-19 related deaths is a key indicator for assessing the human toll of the ongoing pandemic. COVID-19 is now the top cause of death from a single infectious disease globally, dislodging Tuberculosis (TB) to second place [1,3]. COVID-19 was the long-anticipated...