Is Man the New Prospective Amplifying Host? Evolving Faces of SARS-CoV Dynamics and the Epidemiological Challenges

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe. Health systems are grappling with an unprecedented pressure, as the highly virulent SARS-CoV-2 strain is spreading unhinged, under a yet to be understood selection pressure. To understand the underlying causes, and the rapidly evolving disease epidemiology, we need to look closely and comprehend the evolutionary dynamics of the Human Coronaviruses or the HCoV. Methods: The research about this narrative review was conducted using digital platforms like PubMed/Medline, Semantic Scholar, medXiriv, Google Scholars, NIH, EMBL repository, John Hopkins CSSE COVID-19 Data, ResearchGate, and all the mentioned published work, peer-reviewed research articles, and data, have been accessed using the same. Results: The global rise in COVID-19 incidence and the declining trend witnessed in CFR clearly indicates rapid adaptability of the virus across a widespread population encompassing varied genetic make-up, race, diversity, and others. The last two decades have witnessed two HCoV related epidemics viz. the highly pathogenic Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus or SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. While both instances reflect the suspected role of bats as the common reservoir host, the differing intermediate hosts and subsequent spill over to humans is alarming. Conclusions: Through this review, we hypothesise that large-scale pandemics such as this, with alarming instances of differential case incidence patterns in widely varied climatic and geographical conditions put forth the rapid genetic adaptability of coronaviruses. This raises further concerns of a prospective “amplifying-host” in man keeping in mind the widely prevalent asymptomatic silent carriers of COVID-19 currently present across the globe.