The current epidemic of a new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), recently officially named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has reopened the issue of the role and importance of coronaviruses in human pathology (1-5). This epidemic definitively confirms that this heretofore relatively harmless family of viruses, Coronaviridae, includes major pathogens of epidemic potential. The COVID-19 epidemic has clearly demonstrated the power of infectious diseases, which have been responsible for many devastating epidemics throughout history. The epidemiological potential of emerging infectious diseases, especially zoonoses, is affected by numerous environmental, epidemiological, social, and economic factors (6,7). Emerging zoonoses pose both epidemiological and clinical challenges to health care professionals. Since the 1960s, coronaviruses have caused a wide variety of human and animal diseases. In humans, they cause up to a third of all community-acquired upper respiratory tract infections, such as the common cold, pharyngitis, and otitis media. However, more severe forms of bronchiolitis, exacerbations of asthma, and pneumonia in children and adults have also been described, sometimes with fatal outcomes in infants, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. Some coronaviruses are associated with gastrointestinal disease in children. Sporadic infections of the central nervous system have also been reported, although the role of coronaviruses in infections outside the respiratory tract has not been completely clarified.