Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 from Patient with Coronavirus Disease, United States

A novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syn- drome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been identified as the source of a pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 (1,2).The virus was found to be a member of the β coronavirus family, in the same species as SARS-CoV and SARS-related bat CoVs (3,4).Patterns of spread indicate that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted person-to-person, and may be more transmissible than SARS-CoV (5-7).The spike protein of coronaviruses mediates virus binding and cell entry.Initial characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike indicates that it binds the same receptor as SARS-CoV angiotensin-converting enzyme, which is expressed in both upper and lower human respiratory tracts (8).The unprecedented rapidity of spread of this outbreak represents a critical need for reference reagents.The public health community requires viral lysates to serve as diagnostic references, and the research community needs virus isolates to test antiviral compounds, develop new vaccines, and perform basic research.In this article, we describe isolation of SARS-CoV-2 from a patient who had coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the United States and described its genomic sequence and replication characteristics.We have made the virus isolate available to the public health community by depositing it into 2 virus reagent repositories.