How related is SARS-CoV-2 to other coronaviruses?

Letters are not peer-reviewed, unless stated COVID-19 was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China.1 By 6 April 2020, the pandemic had been reported in 209 countries causing 62,955 deaths, with over one million confirmed cases. The aetiological agent, SARS-CoV-2, belongs to the Betacoronavirus (β-CoV) genus in the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae within the family Coronaviridae, which also contains the other two highly pathogenic pathogens to people, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are considered to have spilled over from bats, while masked palm civets and dromedary camels have been confirmed as the intermediate hosts, respectively. Resolving the origin …