A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2, currently known as 2019-nCoV) cause an acute respiratory disease which is termed as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recently has spread firstly in China and subsequently to other parts of world too and therefore, received worldwide attention. After the spread in China, World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020 officially declared the COVID-19 epidemic as a public health emergency of international concern. In the twenty-first century, firstly in 2002, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 resulted in the severe acute respiratory syndrome followed by the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012, which was also remarked as the highly pathogenic and large-scale epidemic coronavirus affected the human population. As per data released by WHO on 1 March 2020, globally a total of 87,137 cases and 79,968 cases in China were confirmed with 2977 deaths (3.4%) worldwide. Subsequently, researchers have identified that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to β-coronavirus, which is quite similar to genome which belongs to bat coronavirus, declaring bat as the natural host for the particular virus. The novel coronavirus make use of the same receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) which was used by SARS-CoV, and chiefly spreads through the respiratory tract. Dominantly, this COVID-19 virus shows evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission, across the globe. The foremost clinical symptoms showing by most of the patients were fever, dry cough, fatigue, difficulty in breathing and less commonly gastrointestinal infections. The older and persons with underlying diseases like any cardiac problem, diabetes, cancer or kidney problems are more susceptible to COVID-19 infection and also vulnerable to serious outcomes, which may be associated with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and cytokine storm. If we talk about the treatment part, currently, there are few specific antiviral strategies, but several drug regimen and other antibody type investigations are under trial. The present review summarizes the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 with the current treatment procedures and future scientific advancements to combat the epidemic novel coronavirus.