Abstract

COVID-19 has undergone rapid spread worldwide, with the number of infected patients and death events being increased at exponential rates, and thus considered an epidemic disaster. However, SARS-CoV-2 has reduced case-fatality rate and enhanced transmission capacity that favor its propagation and make it evolutionarily more advanced than the other coronaviruses. Further, SARS-CoV-2 preserves virulence to certain patients while keeping some patients symptom-free. It is hypothesized here that SARS-CoV-2 functions as a natural selection pressure for human evolution. That is, COVID-19 is an epidemic disaster at the individual level but may be evolutionarily beneficial for the human at the population level, and survived individuals from SARS-CoV-2 infection may be more tolerable to redox pressure and not suffer anymore from diseases such as hypertension if without external intervention.