Question

Consider your area of interest (epidemiology) and the related health issue you have been working on during the first half of the course ( COVID-19).What research would you like to complete to add to the knowledge base? What would be needed to complete your ideal study? Who would you need to include in designing your study?

Answer 1

Modern epidemiological techniques developed largely as a result of outbreak investigations of infectious disease during the nineteenth century.

There are significant misconceptions and many obstacles in the way of illuminating the epidemiological and clinical aspects of COVID-19 as a new emerging epidemic.

Epidemiological and clinical aspects of the disease including genetic diversity of coronavirus genus, mode of transmission, incubation period, infectivity, pathogenicity, virulence, immunogenicity, diagnosis, surveillance, clinical case management and also successful measures for preventing its spread in some communities.

Over the past few decades, a large number of people have been affected with the 3 epidemics caused by coronavirus family (SARS-2003, MERS-2012, and COVID-2019) in the world. Nevertheless, there is substantial genetic dissimilarity between pathogens of the three previous epidemics, in particular MERS with COVID-19. In the previous epidemics, initial hotspots of diseases were Middle East, Saudi Arabia (MERS) and China and animal to human, and then human to human transmissions of pathogens were reported in other countries.

For COVID-19, as suggested by epidemiological evidence in China this outbreak began from a seafood and live animal shopping center in Wuhan, Hubei Province on December 12, 2019. However, similar to two previous epidemics, the current epidemic also switched to human to human transmission immediately, and swept through most regions in China even faster than the previous pandemics.

Number of COVID-19 cases has risen substantially in the world compared to SARS and MERS, and it would probably take longer to halve the disease cases; meaning that control measures would have to be in place for a longer period of time. WHO has announced that Coronavirus epidemic is progressively increasing in three countries, including Italy, South Korea, and Iran.

Genetic differences between SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 epidemics

The animal reservoir of the virus has not yet been identified, but genomic of COVID-19 is so similar to bat coronavirus (98%), reinforcing the presumption that the virus was transmitted by an animal in the shopping center in Wuhan. With regard to genomic similarity, the virus differs from its predecessors, namely SARS (79%) and MERS (50%). As indicated by genetic data, CVOID-19 pathogen is classified as a member of the beta-coronavirus genus, and can bind to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor in humans.