BACKGROUND: Humans can be infected with various coronaviruses that cause serious illness and death. One such pandemic strain of coronavirus was recently identified in December 2019 and lead to a devastating outbreak in Wuhan city of China. It is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is highly contagious which causes symptoms such as fever, cough and shortness of breath. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this review is to highlight the current understanding, research and therapeutic updates of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: A thorough literature search was conducted for research papers and patents in context to COVID-19. All articles with respect to this subject was taken from various public repositories such as Google Scholar, Pubmed, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Springer, Web of Science, etc. Results: The present analysis showed that key areas of the inventions were the vaccines and diagnostic kits apart from the composition for the treatment of CoV. It was also observed that no specific vaccine treatments are available for the treatment of 2019-nCov; however, developing novel chemical or biological drugs and kits for early diagnosis, prevention, and disease management is the primary governing topic among the patented inventions. The present study also indicates potential research opportunities for the future, particularly to combat 2019-nCoV. The current focus of the researches has turned towards developing four potential treatments including development of candidate vaccine, development of novel potential drugs, repurposing of existing drugs and development of convalescent plasma therapy. The PCR based diagnosis is the gold standard for the COVID-19 testing but it require resource time, expertise and high associated cost hence the researchers are also developing different diagnosis methods for the COVID-19. Although vaccines are being developed by various companies and have passed the pre-clinical stages but still there exists no guarantee for these to become the effective vaccine. The current treatments which are being used for COVID-19 patients are not well established and have limited success. CONCLUSION: The pandemic has challenged the medical, economic and public health infrastructure across globe. There is urgent need to explore all available and possible methods/approaches to study this disease for drug and vaccine development at the earliest.