Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: From transmission to control with an interdisciplinary vision

Abstract

There a lot of review papers addressing specific COVID-19 research sectors, then devoted to specialists. This review provides an in-depth summary of the available information about SARS-CoV-2 and the corresponding disease (also known as COVID-19), with a multi-disciplinary approach. After the paper introduction, the first section treats the virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, the medical implications of the infection, and the human susceptivity. Great attention is devoted to the factor affecting the infection routes, distinguishing among the possible human-to-human, environmental-to-human, and pollution-to-human transmission mechanisms. The second section is devoted to reporting the impact of SARS-CoV-2 not only on the healthcare systems but also on the economy and society. The third section is devoted to non-pharmaceutical behaviours against COVID-19. In this context, this review section presents an analysis of the European second wave allowing not only to focalize the importance of some restrictions, but also the relevance of social acceptance of some measures. The data reassumed in this work are very useful for interdisciplinary researchers that work in a team to find the basic available information about all the aspects connected with this pandemic (from virus diffusion mechanism to health information, from economic and social impacts to measures to reduce the pandemic spread), with great attention to social acceptance of restriction measures and of vaccines (that currently results to be insufficient to achieve community immunity). Then, this review paper highlights the fundamental role of the trans-multi-disciplinary research that is devoted not only to understand the basics of the pandemic to propose solutions but has also the commitment to find strategies to increase population resilience. For this aim, the authors strongly suggest the establishment of an international health-care trans-multi-disciplinary workforce devoted to investigate, mitigate, and control also future viral events.

Keywords: Air particulate matter; COVID-19; Europe second wave; Infection mechanisms; Pollution-to-human transmission; SARS-CoV-2.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

Cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world (Source Johns Hopkins University, update on February 25, 2021).

Fig. 2

SCOPUS subject area classification of review papers about COVID-19. All the documents are 8919 (date were extracted on February 26, 2021).

Fig. 3

Environmental factors and COVID-19 transmission route.

Fig. 4

The number of confirmed cases (rolling 7-day average) of COVID-19 detected per million people in some EU member states starting from March 1, 2020, till to January 22, 2021. Data were downloaded from Max Roser, Hannah Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Joe Hasell (2020) - "Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)". Published online atOurWorldInData.org.

Fig. 5

Survey data available on the YouGov website (https://yougov.co.uk/), about the amount of person (%) that wear a facemask in public spaces, for Italy, Spain, France, UK, and Denmark. This survey also reports the temporal variation of the people's behaviour with respect to this measure.

Fig. 6

World COVID-19 vaccination policies (Data published by Thomas Hale, Sam Webster, Anna Petherick, Toby Phillips, and Beatriz Kira (2020). Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, Blavatnik School of Government. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus, updated on February 26, 2021). The groups are the following: key workers/clinically vulnerable groups/elderly groups.