Several works have reported how the group of subjects who are smokers, especially at an older age, tend to have a higher density of angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors. Furthermore, anosmia and ageusia appear to be frequent clinical features in COVID-19 patients. Minor reported symptoms include nausea or vomiting and diarrhea, respectively in 5% and 3.7% of cases.

Several other symptoms, such as bone and muscle aches, chills, and headaches are under observation. These are the two major COVID-19 contributors to hospitalization in an intensive care unit (ICU) and mortality in patients who are more than 60 years old. Damage to the lung tissue may result in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), of which a potential consequence is septic shock. The main symptom of COVID-19 is fever (85% of cases), and in early onset 45% of cases include febrile, dyspnea, dry cough, sore throat, nasal congestion, and radiological findings showing bilateral lung glassy opacities.

Samples gathered from throat and nasal swabs are useful to perform a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis which is able to detect the SARS-CoV-2 infection. The epidemic of COVID-19 is the third one which, starting from an explosive outbreak only in China and subsequently in neighboring Asian countries, spread worldwide, with several countries including the USA, Italy, Spain, China, Germany and Iran leading in terms of the most confirmed cases and related deaths. In 2002, the first epidemic of a CoV infection also began in China, for which the clinical features included severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV, while another-currently ongoing in the Middle East-was first reported in 2012 and is named Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV. On February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) named the epidemic COVID-19. The current CoV infection started in Wuhan, Hubei, China, late in 2019. Currently, a major epidemic of coronavirus (CoV) infection is occurring worldwide.

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