The causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The virus has since spread rapidly across the globe, with the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020. To date, SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 127.3 million lives and over 2.8 million deaths.
Diverse therapeutic options are researched, and vaccines are developed at an unprecedented pace. Concern has mounted, however, about the longevity of these interventions, given the fast mutating nature of the virus and with many SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (including B.1.1.7, P.1 and B.1.35, 501Y.V2) having emerged towards the latter part of 2020 and early 2021.
