CORONA! Did we see that coming?

 So, there is Corona virus everywhere, like literally EVERYWHERE! News channels are talking about it, Social media is talking about it. Almost the entire globe is in Quarantine. The hospitals are pouring with new cases of corona with every passing second. There is an environment of chaos, sadness and despair.

But what is Corona virus? Were we ever effected by any similar virus before? Or is it something completely new? Lets check it out

WHAT IS VIRUS?

Before getting onto the topic lets just pause a bit and get ourselves familiar with what actually a virus is. 

So, actually viruses are microscopic organisms, generally much smaller than bacteria. Almost about all the viruses are infectious in nature and can infect all types of living organisms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria.

 They show peculiar behavior as compared to other living organisms  On one hand, they contain the key elements that make up all living organisms: the nucleic acids, DNA or RNA (any given virus can only have one or the other). On the other hand, viruses lack the capacity to independently read and act upon the information contained within these nucleic acids.

While some scientist interpret viruses to be non-living things. Viruses are complicated assemblies of molecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates, but on their own they can do nothing until they enter a living cell. Without cells, viruses would not be able to multiply. Therefore, viruses are not living things.

 Talking about classification of virus. Viruses are mainly classified by physical characteristics, such as morphology (i.e. being filamentous, isometric (or icosahederal), enveloped and with head and tail), nucleic acid type(either being DNA or RNA), mode of replication (there are around 7 classes depicted as under), host organisms they effect (i.e. plant virus, animal virus and bacteriophage), and the type of disease they cause (such as tumor viruses, herpes viruses etc).

WHAT IS CORONAVIRUS?

The name “Corona” means a part of the body resembling or likened to a crown. In electron microscope, they exhibit prominent club-shaped spikes in a form of corona. It is actually a family of viruses which are important cause of common and atypical pneumonia.

·       CoV-SARS:

In November 2002, CoV-SARS originated in China with a disease of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and it showed signs of atypical pneumonia. The outbreak lasted approximately six months as the disease spread to more than two dozen countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia before it was stopped in July 2003. There were about 8300 cases and 785 deaths (a fatality rate of about 9%). The horseshoe bat appears to be natural reservoir for CoV-SARS.

·       MERS-CoV:

In 2012-2013, a new human corona virus caused an outbreak of serious fatal pneumonia in Saudia Arabia and other countries of this region. The disease was called MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome/Camel Flu) and the virus was called MERS-CoV another name for virus is HCoV-EMC (Human Coronavirus-EMC). Its Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. Typical symptoms include fever, cough, diarrhea, and shortness of breath. The disease is typically more severe in those with other health problems. It was believed to be originating from bats. Humans; however were typically infected from camels, either during direct contact or indirectly. Spread between humans typically requires close contact with an infected person. Its spread is uncommon outside of hospitals.

·       SARS-COV-2:

In 2019, the third member of this family appeared called SARS-COV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) causing  COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019). The disease was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, and has since spreading globally, resulting in the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. It is also believed to be originating from bat.

 a) REPORTED CASES AND MORTALITY RATE:

As of 30 April 2020, more than 3.2 million cases have been reported across 186 countries and territories (with around 1 million cases in USA alone),  resulting in more than 228,000 deaths (62,299 deaths in USA alone). More than 985,000 people have recovered.

The currently active cases are about 2,008,538  with 1,953,945 patients (97%) in Mild condition and 54,593 patients (3%) are labelled serious or critical.

b)  SIGNS & SYMPTOMS:

Common symptoms include fever, cough, fatigue, shortness of breath, and loss of smell. While the majority of cases result in mild symptoms, some progress to viral pneumonia and multi-organ failure. The time from exposure to onset of symptoms is typically around five days but may range from two to fourteen days.

IN A NUTSHELL..

All the members of corona family are highly linked together, with almost same signs and symptoms, same mode of transmission, same vector. It seems like COVID-19 is just the mutated form of SARS from 2002, with a much higher  infectious  rate. This gives rise to a lot of questions, even though these pathogens seems to be highly related showing almost same signs and symptoms then why are we facing a lot of difficulty in finding a cure for this? Even though SARS affected 1000s of people in China, still then why weren’t bat confined to isolated areas or why wasn’t any precaution taken? Did doctors and researchers see that coming? And even if they did, why are we very less equipped when it comes to health system.

All these questions for the next article in this series.
Click here for part2