A large number of cases infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2)have appeared in many countries since December 2019 when the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)occurred,which has posed huge threat to global public health. SARS-CoV-2 has been studied by relevant researchers based on its etiology,epidemiological characteristics,etiology detection,therapy and prognosis since the outbreak,and the research results were summarized in this paper as follows:variants had been produced by SARS-CoV-2 due to its genetic diversity and frequent recombination,which had infected an increasing number of people with stronger transmission;two pathways including cross-species and interpersonal transmission had been known at present,in which,the main pathways of interpersonal transmission included droplet and contact transmission;people at all ages might be infected,especially the elderly with chronic diseases were more likely to become critical patients;the detection rate might be improved by the combination of detection of nucleic acid and antigen antibody that could eliminate the possibility of other coronavirus infection;no effective drugs for COVID-19 had been available at present,instead,broad-spectrum antiviral drugs or traditional Chinese medicine were widely used in clinical practice;the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 had been sped up by all countries,and some vaccines had been at clinical trial stage. The status of development of SARS-CoV-2 were summarized in this paper,which also provided some references for future study and control of it.