What is sars disease? Nowadays no news is complete without the update on the corona. Let’s give you an insight about the coronavirus infection and measures being taken to control its spread. The word “corona” is derived from its shape as it looks like a “crown”.

Corona refers to a family of viruses that produce symptoms ranging from cold to severe form of the disease. All the SARS are genetically related such as SARS CoV-2 (COVID-19), SARS-Cov, etc, but they are all different. The full form of sars is known as severe acute respiratory syndrome.

COVID 19 Vs SARS (Coronavirus vs sars):
The corona group of viruses is known to cause respiratory illness. Coronavirus refers to a group of RNA viruses, and SARS refers to a disease (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) caused by one strain of coronavirus.

Another strain of coronavirus causes MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome).

The Covid 19 or Wuhan coronavirus is yet another strain that causes pneumonia.

Where did SARS originate?
SARS was expected to be a strain of the virus that infects small mammals such as bats. Animals were thought to be the reservoir for the virus. Over a period of time, the virus seems to have mutilated and affected humans.

The genetic information of a virus that otherwise don’t affect human gets evolved over time and infects humans.

SARS is not only the virus that has undergone mutation; the other viruses under this category are HIV, bird flu, swine flu, etc.

The first case of human SARS coronavirus was seen in Guangdong province of Southern China. There was a pandemic outbreak in the region in 2002, which was later identified as SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV).

SARS 2003 was in full bloom in China which was later passed on to the other countries. There were 10% of deaths in the affected people.

In 2002–2004 SARS, the outbreak had affected 29 countries infecting about 8000 people. There were 774 SARS deaths worldwide. The 2019-20 outbreak strain is SARS-Cov-2, commonly called as COVID-19.