Table 1.

Comparison of the epidemiological, clinical, and radiological features of the diseases caused by SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 [18].

Coronavirus	SARS-CoV	MERS-CoV	SARS-CoV-2
Disease	SARS	MERS	COVID-19
Geographical Origin	Guangdong, China	Saudi Arabia	Hubei, China
Latency	2–7 days	2–14 days	11.5 days (97.5% became symptomatic)
Contagious Period	10 days after onset of disease	Once the virus isolated from infected patients	Unknown
Fatality Rate	~10%	~36%	~2.3%
Reservoir	Bats	Bats	Bats
Incidental Host	Masked palm civets	Dromedary camels	Malayan pangolin
Transmission	Respiratory droplets Close contact with diseased patients Fecal-oral Aerosol	Respiratory droplets Close contact with diseased patients/ camels Ingestion of camel milk	Respiratory droplets Close contact with diseased patients Fecal-oral (possibly) Aerosol (possibly)
Clinical Features	Starts as asymptomatic or mild disease, then acute upper respiratory distress and many organs’ failure leading to death. Individual’s variation. Vomiting and diarrhea are also reported.
Radiologic Features	Ground-glass opacity was the most common radiologic finding on chest computed tomography. Most patients also developed marked lymphopenia, similar to what was observed in patients with SARS and MERS [22] (Non-specific to distinguish between three different diseases).