Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection
Re-infection with a different SARS-CoV-2 clade and prolonged viral shedding in a hematopoietic stem cell transplantation patient
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to spread worldwide (WHO 2020). Understanding severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) shedding, transmission dynamics, and re-infection with different SARS-CoV-2 clades in immunocompromised persons is an important clinical and public health challenge (Choi et al., 2020).COVID-19 and Sudden Unexpected Community Deaths in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa - A Medico-Legal Whole-Body Autopsy Case Series
As of June 30th, 2021, the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has resulted in 180 million COVID-19 cases (with 3.9 million deaths) reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Of these, 5.4 million cases with 141,000 deaths have been reported from Africa (WHO Afro 2021). Currently, 150,000 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in Zambia, with 2,100 deaths (WHO COVID-19 dashboard – Zambia 2021).Post-mortem examination of Hospital Inpatient COVID-19 Deaths in Lusaka, Zambia - A Descriptive Whole-body Autopsy Series
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused 171,292,827 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 3,687,589 deaths globally as of June 4th, 2021. Of these 3,530,845 cases occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with 131,630 deaths (WHO Coronavirus dashboard, 2021; Africa CDC - Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), 2021). Zambia reported its first COVID-19 case in March 2020 and has since recorded 96, 563 cases with 1,284 deaths as of June 4th, 202 (World Health Organisation, 2021). Eighteen months after the first COVID-19 cases were reported from Wuhan, China, several major knowledge gaps on COVID-19 pathology and pathogenesis remain, particularly in SSA.First COVID-19 case in Zambia — Comparative phylogenomic analyses of SARS-CoV-2 detected in African countries
The WHO declared COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 and later a pandemic on 11 March 2020 (WHO, 2020a). As of 28 September 2020, there were 32.7 million COVID-19 cases with 991,000 deaths worldwide reported to the WHO (2020b). All African countries have been affected and have reported a total of 1,172,342 COVID-19 cases, including 25,481 deaths (WHO, 2020b). As the global COVID-19 events unfolded, and Africa’s first COVID-19 case was reported from Egypt on 14 February 2020, many African countries prepared for the arrival of COVID-19 (Kapata et al., 2020).Mortality in COVID-19 disease patients: Correlating the association of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) with severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants
Genetic factors such as the HLA type of patients may play a role in regard to disease severity and clinical outcome of patients with COVID-19. Taking the data deposited in the GISAID database, we made predictions using the IEDB analysis resource (TepiTool) to gauge how variants in the SARS-CoV-2 genome may change peptide binding to the most frequent MHC-class I and -II alleles in Africa, Asia and Europe. We caracterized how a single mutation in the wildtype sequence of of SARS-CoV-2 could influence the peptide binding of SARS-CoV-2 variants to MHC class II, but not to MHC class I alleles.
