Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection
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).Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in Daegu, South Korea
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory tract infection caused by a new emerging coronavirus, currently named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first case of COVID-19 was reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, in December 2019. Now, COVID-19 has spread to over 200 countries within only four months (Hui et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020a). In South Korea, the first case infected with SARS-CoV-2, a Chinese visitor from Wuhan, was reported on January 20, 2020 (Kim et al., 2020).COVID-19 epidemic in Brazil: Where are we at?
Introduction: Brazil was the first South American country to report a confirmed case of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), on February 26, 2020, in São Paulo state [1]. Since then, the country has presented a complex epidemiological scenario, with marked regional differences. Here, we aimed to analyze the trends of COVID-19 in Brazil in 2020 by Federal Units (FU).Ascertainment rate of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Japan
As of March 1, 2020, a total of 58 countries had reported at least one confirmed case of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and the cumulative number of deaths had reached 2977 persons across the world (WHO, 2020). To achieve appropriate countermeasures, it is vital to understand the current epidemiological situations of the COVID-19 epidemic.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).Epidemic update of COVID-19 in Hubei Province compared with other regions in China
Since the first atypical pneumonia case, caused by a novel coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, China on December 31, 2019 (WHO, 2020a), the novel coronavirus infection outbreak quickly spread in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province and other districts of Hubei Province with a further spread across the Chinese mainland. By 29 Feb 2020 a total of 79,824 cases of infection had been confirmed nationwide including all administrative regions, with another 851 suspected cases. COVID-19 cases were also reported in Thailand, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US, and some countries in Europe (CCDCPC, 2019).COVID-19: Four Paediatric Cases in Malaysia
This is a brief report of 4 paediatric cases of COVID-19 infection in MalaysiaAdoption of personal protective measures by ordinary citizens during the COVID-19 outbreak in Japan
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has become a global problem (WHO, 2020b). As of March 23, 2020, the global number of reported cases of COVID-19 totaled approximately 330,000 cases, with 14,510 deaths (WHO, 2020c). Japan reported the first case of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 on January 15, 2020, following confirmed cases in China and Thailand (WHO, 2020d). The number of patients is increasing daily.Pneumonia in children admitted to the national referral hospital in Bhutan: A prospective cohort study
Pneumonia is the single largest cause of mortality in children aged under five years, causing an estimated 15.5% of all deaths in children under five years of age, and over 800,000 paediatric deaths annually (Liu et al., 2016; UN IGME, 2018). Most of these lives could be saved through more effective and equitable health system interventions, combining prevention, early and accurate diagnosis, and treatment (Walker et al., 2013; Rambaud-Althaus et al., 2015). The main pneumonia burden remains disproportionately concentrated in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (Walker et al., 2013).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).Serial interval of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections
The epidemic of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections that began in China in late 2019 has rapidly grown and cases have been reported worldwide. An empirical estimate of the serial interval—the time from illness onset in a primary case (infector) to illness onset in a secondary case (infectee)—is needed to understand the turnover of case generations and transmissibility of the disease (Fine, 2003). Estimates of the serial interval can only be obtained by linking dates of onset for infector-infectee pairs, and these links are not easily established.Estimation of the reproductive number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and the probable outbreak size on the Diamond Princess cruise ship: A data-driven analysis
A novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which originated from Wuhan, China, has spread to 25 countries worldwide. Up to February 16, 2020, the cumulative number of confirmed cases were 70548 in China (National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, 2020) and 683 in other countries (World Health Organization, 2020). The whole world, especially China, has taken extraordinary measures to contain the outbreak of COVID-19, and the effects were already present.
