First few Article Sentences
Once upon a time severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the 2019 novel coronavirus, a pandemic commonly known as COVID-19 or simply COVID. Considered to be of zoonotic origin, COVID is closely related to bat coronaviruses, pangolin coronaviruses and SARS-CoV, although the full extent of the pandemic’s epidemiology may take years to unfold. Nearing the fifth-month since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the medical community, the media and the masses continue to debate the efficacy of social distancing, masks and the mortality rate while the general structure of modern civilization as it existed in late February 2020 continues to crumble.
Notwithstanding the dispute over the pandemic’s origin and the threat it may or may not cause to humans, the world has shown some resiliency during a global “shutdown” of unprecedented and epic proportion. While certain open issues remain to be decided and may only find resolution through the Supreme Court and/or civil unrest, this article focuses on the minutia of COVID, and specifically what to do when respiratory secretions collected using a nasopharyngeal swab combine with reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction testing and possibly even computed tomography imaging of the chest to conclude a patient is sick.