Coronavirus
- Pedro
- Mar 21, 2020
- 3 min read
Since January of this year,2020, a virus has been attracting the world's attention; it is covid-19, also called "coronavirus". COVID-19 is not the first human coronavirus, the pioneers were isolated in 1937. The term "corona" is due to the fact that the profile in the virus, with the use of a microscope, resembles a crown. At the end of January this year, the first cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Wuhan, China. The incidences of infected began to increase exponentially, so the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the OUTBREAK of COVID-19. It is important to note that this article will not contain much statistical data because they are undergoing changes on a daily basis.
The virus progressed rapidly, changing its "status" from outbreak to epidemic, to pandemic. The difference between such classifications is important to be clear of the scale considered. An outbreak is when a pathogen (an organism capable of causing diseases) is able to suddenly infect several people within a restricted region. An epidemic is when there is an even greater increase in the number of infected, not restricted to a region. A disease reaches the level of pandemic when it reaches several countries and continents, adding a global scale. COVID-19 is already considered a pandemic.
In the midst of social networks it is crucial to be careful with the recurring "fake-news", news with high incidence of misinformation. In order to avoid those, it is trivial to seek information from reliable sources, such as those offered on the websites of the world health organization (WHO), CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States) and ECDC (European Center for Disease Prevention and Control), whose links are at the end of the article.
One of the biggest problems of COVID-19 is its transmission, which is extremely fast and easily contagious. The virus aggregates on surfaces without difficulty, sustaining itself for hours or even days. To perform an analysis of the possible impacts of a given disease, mathematical models are constructed so that the competent institutions can assess how severe the measures to decrease the transmission rate have to be. A very recurrent parameter in the midst of such models is the basic reproduction number, denoted by R0, being an expected value of the number of cases of contamination from a single infected (in a population where all individuals are considered susceptible to contamination). The higher the R0 value, the easier the transmission of the disease, indicating that more intense measures should be taken in order to seek satisfactory control accordingly. In the estimates of the basic number of reproduction, when R0 >1 the pathogen is already classified as epidemic.
The symptoms of COVID-19 are similar to those of the flu, and the individual infected tend to present dry cough, fever and difficulty to breath.
The precautions that should be taken are similar to those of influenza: washing hands frequently (with soap and hand sanitizer), avoiding crowds of peole, and the isolation of individuals with symptoms.
The origin of COVID-19 is unknown (so far); however it is known to be a virus similar to that of bats (but this does not guarantee that it came from these). The first cases were recorded at a Wuhan fish market, and the four infected worked on the site. It is detachable that the market in matter does not sell bats and that subsequent tests carried out on the animals sold at the market were negative for COVID-19.
Several studies on different aspects are being conducted on COVID-19. A study from the Hong Kong hospital showed that some patients may have pulmonary sequelae (reflections of the disease even after cured). However, the study was done with a very small population sample (12 patients were considered) which illustrates to be a very early study, not supporting generalizations. Another study conducted by three researchers (from United States, United Kingdom and Australia) concluded that COVID-19 was not "created" in a laboratory (as some conspiracy theorists have pointed out over the internet), and the efficient way in which the virus binds to human cells point to natural selection (the virus has adapted in such a way as to be able to easily associate with the cells of the human body). Furthermore, the referring virus has traces very similar to the already known viruses that affect animals such as bats and pangolins (indicating a plausible adaptation of the virus to affect humans).
With various researches being carried out at the moment, in collaboration with countries worldwide, the vaccine against COVID-19 is taken as one of the priorities of the scientific world.
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