Special features of SARS-CoV-2 in daily practice

Abstract

The severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (commonly known as SARS-CoV-2) is a novel coronavirus (designated as 2019-nCoV), which was isolated for the first time after the Chinese health authorities reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Optimal management of the Coronavirus Disease-2019 disease is evolving quickly and treatment guidelines, based on scientific evidence and experts' opinions with clinical experience, are constantly being updated. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern". The total lack of immune protection brought about a severe spread of the contagion all over the world. For this reason, diagnostic tools, patient management and therapeutic approaches have been tested along the way, in the desperate race to break free from the widespread infection and its fatal respiratory complications. Current medical knowledge and research on severe and critical patients' management and experimental treatments are still evolving, but several protocols on minimizing risk of infection among the general population, patients and healthcare workers have been approved and diffused by International Health Authorities.

Keywords: Acute respiratory distress syndrome; Antivirals; Clinical biochemistry; Clinical microbiology; Emergency and critical care medicine; Pandemics; SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19; Sepsis; Translational medicine; Viruses.

Figure 1

Most commonly observed symptoms before hospitalization in a sample of 19996 patients who died of coronavirus disease-2019 in Italy. Source: Epicentro, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy.