**3. Medical laboratory and research towards discovery of COVID-19**

On December 31, 2019, China alerted the WHO about the occurrence of several cases of an unusual pneumonia caused by an unknown virus among persons who had either visited or had consumed food from the live animal market in Wuhan city of China, the epicenter of the outbreak. Since then, the infection has spread to other Chinese cities as well as internationally, resulting in the current pandemic. On January 7, 2020, the WHO announced they had identified a new virus. The novel virus was named 2019-COV and was identified as member of the coronaviridae family which also includes SARS and MERS. China announced its first death from the virus on January 23, 2020 as rail and air departure were suspended on January 30, WHO declared the outbreak a global health emergency [4, 5, 7].

The medical laboratory has been duly involved and its involvement ranges from the discovery the pneumonia like virus to the description as SARS and MERS in nature, viral characterization and sequencing and the naming of the viral disease as new coronavirus and COVID-19 [11]. The role of the medical laboratory services from COVID-19 discovery to the management cannot be over emphasized.
