By Now you've probably heard of Covid-19 or corona virus disease discovered in 2019 which is responsible for a global pandemic Covid-19 is caused by SARS COV 2 or severely acute respiratory syndrome corona virus - because it's genetically similar to the Sarris corona virus which was responsible for the SARS outbreak in 2002 now corona viruses that circulate among humans are typically benign and they cause about 1/4 of all common cold illnesses in Covid-19 what happened is that there was a corona virus circulating among bats which are a natural animal reservoir and it mutated just enough to start infecting an intermediate host the Pangolin an animal that looks like a cross between an anteater and an armadillo in late 2019 the corona virus mutated again and started causing disease in humans the outbreak began in China but has since spread around the world as of March 9th 2020 or roughly three months into the outbreak there have been 109 thousand five hundred and seventy-eight