What lessons learned from the previous SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV viruses have proven useful to identify therapeutic targets for COVID-19?
These zoonotic beta-coronaviruses share structural and genomic similarities that are useful to understand COVID-19. SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV have lower transmission rate, shorter incubation time and higher fatality rates than SARS-CoV-2. In all of them, the spike protein plays a key role in infection via ACE2-binding, hence it is a clear therapeutic target. Potential treatments already used for SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV include remdesivir, chloroquine, tocilizumab and CP, among others. However, none of them have been tested in robust clinical trials(see below section 8 ). Lessons in epidemiological surveillance and isolation measures have also proven useful.177