Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection
Effectiveness of the neutralizing antibody sotrovimab among high-risk patients with mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 in Qatar
Several monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 have been developed for the treatment of COVID-19 (Miguez-Rey et al., 2022). One of these is sotrovimab, which significantly reduced the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization and death due to infection with pre-Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variants in a randomized clinical trial (Gupta et al., 2021). The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency authorization to permit the use of sotrovimab for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in patients at high risk of progression to severe COVID-19 (US Food and Drug Administration, 2022).Admissions to a large tertiary care hospital and Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction positivity: primary, contributing, or incidental COVID-19
Monitoring national hospitalization rates for COVID-19 has been essential throughout the pandemic to guide public health decision-making and to evaluate vaccine efficacy. However, with the rapid worldwide spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant of concern (associated with a decreased severity) and increasing immunity against SARS-CoV-2, interpreting the true impact of these hospitalization rates has been complicated (Viana et al., 2022; World Health Organization, 2021).Stringency of containment and closures on the growth of SARS-CoV-2 in Canada prior to accelerated vaccine roll-out
Throughout 2020, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were the primary tools employed by governments and public health agencies to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (Ferguson et al. 2020, Koo et al., 2020). In Canada, as in many other countries, common NPIs included border closures, bans on non-essential travel, and mandatory physical distancing measures (McCoy et al, 2020). However, in contrast to many countries—particularly those in Europe—the authority and responsibility to implement these policies fall on provincial and territorial governments, meaning there is no formally coordinated response between them (Cameron-Blake et al., 2021).Characteristics and Outcomes of COVID-19 in Reproductive-Aged Pregnant and Nonpregnant Women in Osaka, Japan
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first reported in Wuhan, China (Li et al., 2020, Zhou et al., 2020), and rapidly spread worldwide, imposing a major burden on healthcare systems globally. Pregnant women are considered to be at a higher risk of severe morbidity and mortality from other respiratory infections, such as influenza or SARS (Allotey et al., 2020, Blitz et al., 2020, Vintzileos et al., 2020, Xu et al., 2020), than nonpregnant women.SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence among 7950 healthcare workers in the Region of Southern Denmark
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) surged as an ongoing worldwide pandemic throughout 2020 (Park et al., 2020; Siordia, 2020). The first Danish cases were reported in late February 2020, and the initial spread of infection most likely originated from ski tourists returning from Northern Italy and Austria (Madsen et al., 2021). The first epidemic wave in Denmark peaked in late March and early April, with 9.2 patients admitted to hospital per 100 000 population (Madsen et al., 2021; Statens Serum Institut 2021).Real-Time SARS-CoV-2 Genotyping by High-Throughput Multiplex PCR Reveals the Epidemiology of the Variants of Concern in Qatar
Complementing whole genome sequencing strategies with high-throughput multiplex RT-qPCR genotyping allows for more comprehensive and real-time tracking of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. During the second and third waves of COVID-19 in Qatar, PCR genotyping, combined with Sanger sequencing of un-typeable samples, was employed to describe the epidemiology of the Alpha, Beta and Delta variants. A total of 9792 nasopharyngeal PCR-positive samples collected between April-June 2021 were successfully genotyped, revealing the importation and transmission dynamics of these three variants in Qatar.The toll of COVID-19 on African children: A descriptive analysis on COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality among the pediatric population in Sub-Saharan Africa
Since its emergence in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected millions of people around the world and caused over 3.9 million officially registered deaths (WHO, 2021). From the onset of this pandemic, the pathogenic aspects in the pediatric population have remained less clear, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where specialists' initial projections estimated a high number of cases and deaths (Cabore et al., 2020).SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and associated factors in Manaus, Brazil: baseline results from the DETECTCoV-19 cohort study
Infectious diseases have a profound impact on humans, particularly vulnerable populations (Fauci and Morens, 2012). The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and a lack of effective treatment and non-pharmaceutical interventions to curb transmission have led to an exponential increase in the burden of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide (Hsiang et al., 2020; Kraemer et al., 2020; Bo et al., 2021).High seroprevalence for SARS-CoV-2 infection in South America, but still not enough for herd immunity!
There has been intense discussion about the importance of reaching herd immunity to achieve global population protection status against SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. For that reason, vaccination coverage and seroprevalence studies are increasing around the world; some of them have shown an increase in the seroprevalence of different populations. For example, a recent study in Jordan (Sughayer et al., 2021) stated the importance of seroprevalence studies for SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthy blood donors.Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of children with COVID-19 in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), remains an ongoing challenge to countries worldwide. The disease emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2000). The COVID-19 outbreak in Malaysia occurred in three waves. The first wave started with three cases imported from China via Singapore on 25 January 2020 (Rahman, 2020).Hydroxychloroquine as a primary prophylactic agent against SARS-CoV-2 infection: A cohort study
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been shown to be in-vitro inhibitors of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in infected Vero cells (Liu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020; Yao et al., 2020). This contributed to the hypothesis that such drugs could be used as prophylaxis for SARS-CoV-2 infection and for treatment of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Hydroxychloroquine is used for long-term treatment of several rheumatic diseases; it has a favourable safety profile (Ruiz-Irastorza et al., 2010; Ponticelli and Moroni, 2017) and a low cost (Ponticelli and Moroni, 2017), which is a key point when facing a pandemic.Undetected infectives in the Covid-19 pandemic
A critical issue in the control of an epidemic is to know the exact number of infective subjects. Current estimates of SARS-CoV-2 infection are significantly hampered by the difficulty to perform large-scale diagnostic tests, despite the current awareness that the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic is mostly caused by undetected carriers.Early transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa: An epidemiological and phylogenetic report
PubMed, BioRxiv and MedRxiv were searched for reports on epidemiology and phylogenetic analysis using whole genome sequencing (WGS) of SARS-CoV-2. The following keywords were used: SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, 2019-nCoV or novel coronavirus and transmission genomics, epidemiology, and phylogenetic or reproduction number. The search identified an important lack of molecular epidemiology studies in the southern hemisphere, with a few reports from Latin America and one from Africa. In other early transmission reports on SARS-CoV-2 infections in Africa, authors focused on transmission dynamics, but molecular and phylogenetic methods were missing.Human respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, circulating in the winter season 2019–2020 in Parma, Northern Italy
Viral infections of the upper and lower respiratory tracts are among the most common illnesses in humans. They occur mainly in children and infants, who can experience up to five to six episodes in any given year (Berry et al., 2015). For this reason, acute respiratory infections (ARIs) represent a persistent public health problem. Although the majority of ARIs remain confined to the upper respiratory tract (rhinosinusitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, and tracheitis), they can cause severe manifestations when they affect the lower respiratory tract (bronchitis, bronchiolitis, and pneumonia) (Bicer et al., 2013; Tregoning and Schwarze, 2010; Zappa et al., 2008).Asymptomatic infection by SARS-CoV-2 in healthcare workers: A study in a large teaching hospital in Wuhan, China
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a large number of related deaths and multiple healthcare-associated outbreaks (Zhu et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2020a; Huang et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2020a). Investigators have summarised the clinical characteristics of initial onset in cases (Huang et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2020a): some had atypical clinical manifestations (e.g. severe cases only had moderate or low fever or even no fever), while some mild cases did not have pneumonia and only had low fever or mild fatigue (NHC, 2020; Guan et al., 2020).Isolation and phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 variants collected in Russia during the COVID-19 outbreak
On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as a pandemic (WHO, 2020a). The outbreak started as a cluster of pneumonia cases in late December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China (WHO, 2020b); it has now reached the magnitude of over 12 million confirmed cases in 188 countries worldwide (Dong et al., 2020; (COVID-19 Dashboard, 2020).Do superspreaders generate new superspreaders? A hypothesis to explain the propagation pattern of COVID-19
The patterns of propagation of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2003 were not explained by conventional epidemic models that assumed homogeneity of infectiousness. Instead, the existing datasets were best matched by models that used negative binomial distributions, in which a small proportion of cases were highly infectious (Lloyd-Smith et al., 2005; McDonald et al., 2004; Shen et al., 2004). Data and modelling supported the existence of superspreaders, which played a crucial role in propagating the disease by being very efficient at transmitting SARS-CoV-1, such that in the absence of superspreading events most cases infected few, if any, secondary contacts (Stein, 2011).The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak: What we know
Coronaviruses (CoVs), a large family of single-stranded RNA viruses, can infect animals and also humans, causing respiratory, gastrointestinal, hepatic, and neurologic diseases (Weiss and Leibowitz, 2013). As the largest known RNA viruses, CoVs are further divided into four genera: alpha-coronavirus, beta- coronavirus, gamma-coronavirus and delta-coronavirus (Yang and Leibowitz, 2015). To date, there have been six human coronaviruses (HCoVs) identified, including the alpha-CoVs HCoVs-NL63 and HCoVs-229E and the beta-CoVs HCoVs-OC43, HCoVs-HKU1, severe acute respiratory syndrome-CoV (SARS-CoV) (Drosten et al., 2020), and Middle East respiratory syndrome-CoV (MERS-CoV) (Zaki et al., 2012).Prevalence of comorbidities and its effects in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2: a systematic review and meta-analysis
In December, 2019, a cluster of cases of “pneumonia of unknown origin” has been reported in Wuhan, China. Only a few days later, Chinese health authorities confirmed that this cluster was associated with coronavirus (Hui et al., 2020) and the disease caused by it was named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by WHO. Confirmed by comparative homology analysis, COVID-19 is closely associated with bat-derived severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (bat-SL-covzc45 and bat-SL-covzxc21, with 88% identity), but is far away from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) (about 79%) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) (about 50%) (Lu et al., 2020).
