- The details remain unclear, except for the fact that SARS-CoV-2 infects human cells in the same way that SARS-CoV-1 (from the outbreak in 2002) does, only more efficiently
- The basics: the 'spikes' protruding from the viral surface bind to receptors on human cells called ACE2, undergo a transformational change, and then fuse the viral and human cell membranes
- The virus contains enough of its own genetic material to get inside a host cell and hijack that cell's replication machinery to make more viral copies
- The precise genetic changes required to infect human cells remain uncertain at this point