Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-COV-2) is a virus responsible for the outbreak of Covid-19, which began in Wuhan, China in December 2019. It is a disease-causing human pathogen. Common symptoms of COVID-19 in human include fever and respiratory symptoms (e.g. cough, shortness of breath or difficulty of breathing). Other less common symptom includes diarrhea. The symptoms can range from mild to severe. Most Cases present mild symptoms except for elderly and immunocompromised which constitute a higher percentage of mortalities due to pneumonia related complications. Travel associated cases from china was initially the primary source of exposure which eventually spread to local exposure primarily due to human-to-human transmission. The statistics is scoring every hour in an alarming and mitigation strategies of management including diagnosis, containment and treatment models including vaccine development.

Laboratory diagnosis primarily from clinical specimens, contain lower concentration of pathogens than found in cultures. These include blood, urine, feces, swabs and tissue collected from patients (PUI and confirmed COVID-19 positive). For routine diagnosis, nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) and oropharyngeal swab (OPS) are collected. It is recommended that, at a minimum, laboratory must strictly enforce its compliance with Biosafety Level 2 guidelines based on WHO Biosafety Manual 3rd Edition, specifically in work areas where primary specimens are handled and tested. Enhancements are added based on local risk assessment.