CORONAVIRUSES AND WUHAN PNEUMONIA COVID-19

The group of coronaviruses is only one of those responsible for the respiratory tract infection diseases that occur in millions of people every year. There are, of course, other etiological actors, which are mostly viruses of the genera adenovirus (AdV), rhinovirus (HRV), influenza or influenzavirus (FLU) and some others. Among all these pathogens, coronaviruses are attributed to about 15% to 30% of total upper respiratory infection diseases. Most of these infections look like colds or flu, some can lead to pneumonia and serious conditions, although it is very difficult to hide the symptoms of coronavirus diseases, since they can change between patients who apparently have the same strain and the fact that most coronavirus infections are usually accompanied by other virus infections, both respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases that they mostly generate.

But what is a coronavirus, besides, logically, one more virus. Well, viruses are the tremendously varied biological group. Although they are all in the same bag, they are a group of organisms with radically different genetic and structural differences. Attempting to extract a taxonomy or organize such a group into more complex organisms such as bacteria, archaea or eukaryotes would be a virtually impossible mission. Therefore, it can be said that virologists try modestly, however they manage to organize many viruses in families with enough similarities to accept that they are related to each other. Coronaviruses are primarily characterized by their genome: they is a single RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecule. Although this is not an uncommon case among viruses, in other types of organisms it is unthinkable, since all the others (including us) have a genome formed by two very long chains of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) paired together.