Current Status of Epidemiology, Diagnosis, Therapeutics, and Vaccines for Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which causes serious respiratory illness such as pneumonia and lung failure, was first reported in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, China. The etiological agent of COVID-19 has been confirmed as a novel coronavirus, now known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is most likely originated from zoonotic coronaviruses, like SARS-CoV, which emerged in 2002. Within a few months of the first report, SARS-CoV-2 had spread across China and worldwide, reaching a pandemic level. As COVID-19 has triggered enormous human casualties and serious economic loss posing global threat, an understanding of the ongoing situation and the development of strategies to contain the virus’s spread are urgently needed. Currently, various diagnostic kits to test for COVID-19 are available and several repurposing therapeutics for COVID-19 have shown to be clinically effective. In addition, global institutions and companies have begun to develop vaccines for the prevention of COVID-19. Here, we review the current status of epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and vaccine development for COVID-19.

Hypertension, Thrombosis, Kidney Failure, and Diabetes: Is COVID-19 an Endothelial Disease? A Comprehensive Evaluation of Clinical and Basic Evidence

“…The clinical course of COVID-19 consists of two main phases: viral infection and immune/ inflammatory response (Figure 3), which require distinct therapeutic approaches. Strikingly, several drugs suggested as a potential therapeutic strategy for COVID-19 [229][230][231] have been shown to ameliorate endothelial function, including interleukin 6 (IL-6) receptor antagonists (e.g., tocilizumab [232]), colchicine [233], azithromycin [234], and famotidine [235].…”

Lessons Learned from COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

“…Therapies currently used in COVID-19 patients include antibiotics (third-generation macrolides/cephalosporins) and corticosteroids. Validation of hydroxychloroquine is being sought in the early stages of lung involvement; however, further studies will be necessary for the use of monoclonal inhibitors of the inflammatory cascade reaction [16]. The use of low-molecular weight heparins to cope with some of the dramatic clinical manifestations of COVID-19 infection is now widespread, and studies involving the use of fresh plasma from probably immune donors are being validated.…”

Ethical surgical triage of patients with head and neck cancer during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Recently, however, the unprecedented and nowfamiliar events related to the Coronavirus Two induced pandemic and the illness that the virus causes (COVID- 19) have affected communities all over the globe, [2][3][4] including South Florida. By the time of this writing, Newsweek reported, based on U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, that coronavirus had surpassed heart disease and cancer as the number one killer of Americans on a daily basis.…”

“…Though data were scarce, experience in China and Italy indicated that the risk of either directly developing a coronavirus infection, or of ending up with a complication requiring care in the midst of a situation of inadequate medical resources, might outweigh the benefit of receiving cancer surgery earlier in certain cases. 3,4,8 The greatest paradigm shift that occurs in times of crisis, however, is the concept that the good of society, and the health of the caregivers and other patients, may have some weight in the equation, even as clinicians continue to make our patients' well-being our primary goal. Considering these additional factors is the part that we may find most difficult to adjust to.…”

“…14,15 While we can extrapolate from triage and management models developed for times of war or natural disaster, this global pandemic is a different entity entirely, affecting almost the entire planet at once. [2][3][4] It involves an ascension to a peak volume and then a descension, rather than a single disaster date as would occur with a natural disaster or act of war, and it is affecting Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas within months of each other. 2,3 The Severe Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome-Coronavirus One (SARS-CoV-1) epidemic of 2001-2004, 16 the hemagglutinin 1 and neuraminidase 1 (H1N1) influenza epidemic of 2009-2010, 17 the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome of 2012, 18 and the West African Ebola epidemic 19 of 2013 to 2014, were much more geographically confined.…”