Novel coronavirus pandemic: A global health threat

Abstract

The world is facing one of its worst public health crises in modern history. Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has shown how fragile our global preparedness for infectious diseases is. The world is a small-connected globe with short travel time between its remote parts. COVID-19 has spread globally and swiftly with major impacts on health, economy, and quality of life of communities. At this point in the time, April 9, 2020, >1,500,000 patients have been infected and >88,000 patients have died worldwide within the last 3 months. The status is evolving and the costly lessons learned over time are increasing. These lessons are global as this virus is. They involve different domains of health sciences including virology, public health, clinical, critical care, and disaster management. This review addresses our current knowledge of COVID-19 pandemic from the basic virology and transmission, through prevention, infection control, clinical management, and finally disaster management including the recovery period. This review has a multidisciplinary approach, which is needed at this time. After this difficult period passes, we have to carry the lessons we learned for the future so that we can be better prepared. One thing that has clearly emerged from this ongoing crisis is that infectious diseases have no borders and we have to work together, using the one world, one health approach, if we are to minimize the enormous impact such pandemics can cause.

Keywords: Coronavirus; coronavirus 2019; critical care; disaster; emergency; epidemiology; infection control; prevention.

Figure 1

Daily number of coronavirus 2019 patients in china (yellow bars) and rest of the world (blue bars) during the period of January 23, 2020, till March 23, 2020, crude data were extracted from https://www.worldometers. info/coronavirus/(accessed on 24^th March 2020)

Figure 2

Axial noncontrast image of a computed tomography of the chest performed 5 days after the onset of symptoms shows patchy, peripheral predominantly nodular areas of consolidation and ground-glass opacities. Zhang W, Shi H. Evolving COVID-19 Pneumonia. Radiology Case Collection doi: 10.1148/ cases. 20201558. Published online March 17, 2020. ©Radiological Society of North America (Reproduced with permission from the Radiological Society of North America)

Figure 3

Coronal reformatted noncontrast CT images show diffuse ground-glass opacities and consolidation with areas of secondary lobular sparing. Gui S, Pan F, Yang L. Severe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Radiology Case Collection doi: 10.1148/cases. 20201281. Published online February 20, 2020. ©Radiological Society of North America (Reproduced with permission from the Radiological Society of North America)

Figure 4

An illustration demonstrating the principle of mitigation. The left curve represents the natural curve of an epidemic. The curve starts at time 0 (T0) and ends at time 1 (T1). The dashed line represents the health care capacity. The number of infected patients is much more than the system capacity. By reducing the progress of infection, the natural curve will flattened. The modified curve will start at time 0 (T0) and end at time 2 (T2). The aim is to reduce its peak to be less than the health care capacity. The same patients are treated over a longer period of time trying to give the desired health care standard (Illustrated by Professor Fikri Abu-Zidan)