Abstract

In December 2019, a novel coronavirus infection emerged in Wuhan, China and spread 215 countries throughout worldwide within few months. It has already infected more than 3700000 people and caused more than 250000 deaths globally. This has been the third coronavirus that cause acute severe respiratory infections, following severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012. The World Health Organization named the disease “COVID‐19” and announced the COVID‐19 pandemi on 12 March 2020. Coronaviruses are RNA viruses with the largest known genome. In replication of RNA viruses, mutation rates are considered to be much higher than DNA viruses. As the amount of copies they replicate increases, they are more likely to make mistakes, resulting in the development of a new mutation, infection of new cell types.