signifcant morbidity and mortality in China, but also revealed major systematic problems in control and prevention of infectious diseases there. Unfortunately, many of the lessons from the 2003 outbreak have not been learned. Importantly, disease control professionals, practicing physicians and scientists are disconnected in the fght against SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. In addition, important decisions were not made by experts in the feld. Hopefully, these issues will be dealt with swiftly and decisively during and after the outbreak. Above we have discussed the two possibilities that this outbreak will unfold. If SARS-CoV-2 is not eliminated from humans through quarantine and other measures, it can still be eradicated by vaccination. If it attenuates to become another community-acquired human coronavirus causing mild respiratory tract disease resembling the other four human coronaviruses associated with common cold, it will not be a disaster either. Before SARS-CoV-2 attenuates further to a much less virulent form, early diagnosis and improved treatment of severe cases hold the key to reduce mortality. We should remain vigilant, but there are grounds for guarded optimism. Redoubling our research eforts on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 will solidify the scientifc basis on which important decisions are made. Acknowledgements We thank Pearl Chan, Hinson Cheung, Terence Lee and Kam-Leung Siu for critical reading of the manuscript. Authors’ contributions KSY and DYJ wrote the manuscript with inputs from ZWY, SYF and CPC. All authors read and approved the fnal manuscript. Yuen et al. Cell Biosci (2020) 10:40 Page 5 of 5 • fast, convenient online submission • thorough peer review by experienced researchers in your field • rapid publication on acceptance • support for research data, including large and complex data types • gold Open Access which fosters wider collaboration and increased citations • maximum visibility for your research: over 100M website views per year At BMC, research is always in progress. Learn more biomedcentral.com/submissions Ready to submit your research ? Choose BMC and benefit from: Funding Coronavirus research in our laboratory was funded by the Hong Kong Health and Medical Research Fund (HKM-15-M01) and Hong Kong Research Grants Council (T11-707/15-R). Availability of data and materials Not applicable. Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests No potential confict of interest was reported by the authors. Author details 1 School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, 3/F Laboratory Block, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. 2 Department of Microbiology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. Received: 26 February 2020 Accepted: 7 March 2020 References 1. Chan JFW, Yuan S, Kok KH, Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding. Lancet. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140 -6736(20)30251-8. 6. The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiol‑ ogy Team. Vital surveillances: the epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19)—China. China CDC Weekly. 2020;2(8):113–22. 7. Wang D, Hu B, Hu C, Zhu F, Liu X, Zhang J, Wang B, Xiang H, Cheng Z, Xiong Y, Zhao Y, Li Y, Wang X, Peng Z. Clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019, novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia in Wuhan China. JAMA. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.1585. 8. Wu JT, Leung K, Leung GM. Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originat‑ ing in Wuhan, China: a modelling study. Lancet. 2020;395(10225):689-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30260-9. 9. Heimdal I, Moe N, Krokstad S, Christensen A, Skanke LH, Nordbø SA, Døllner H. Human coronavirus in hospitalized children with respiratory tract infections: a 9-year population-based study from Norway. J infect Dis. 2019;219(8):1198–206. 10. de Wit E, Feldmann F, Cronin J, Jordan R, Okumura A, Thomas T, Scott D, Cihlar T, Feldmann H. Prophylactic and therapeutic remdesivir (GS-5734) treatment in the rhesus macaque model of MERS-CoV Scope Note: This assessment responds to the President’s request that the Intelligence Community (IC) update its previous judgments on the origins of COVID-19. It also identifies areas for possible additional research. Annexes include a lexicon, additional details on methodology, and comments from outside experts. This assessment is based on information through August 2021. The IC assesses that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019 with the first known cluster of COVID-19 cases arising in Wuhan, China in December 2019. In addition, the IC was able to reach broad agreement on several other key issues. We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way. Finally, the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial