Coronavirus

As many of you know, the novel coronavirus has been all the rage in the news and other public health platforms. The virus’s first appearance in humans appeared on 31 December 2019, in the Huebi Province of China. At the time, the WHO China Country Office received reports that it was pneumonia of “unknown etiology.” According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) official situation report number 1, between 31 December 2019 and 3 January 2020, a total of 44 cases were reported. The most recent situation report released by the WHO on 30 January 2020, there are 7,818 confirmed cases in 18 countries. As you can see, this virus is spreading very quickly and across boarders and is labeled as a novel acute respiratory disease. Let’s try to understand why this virus is so effective and transmissible by looking at its fundamental structure.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine explains the structure and virulence of the novel corona virus. Corona viruses are known to cause up to 30% of colds, but rarely cause lower respiratory infections. Researchers were able to identify this virion as a corona virus by examining its RNA genome, nucleocapsid, and large spikes. These spikes are able to fuse to receptors on the host cell membrane via the spikes and enter the host. The machinery used to replicate the viral genome includes a molecule called RNA polymerase, which is error bound and can cause mutations and recombination. The novel SARS-associated coronavirus could have arisen from a mutant coronavirus that gained new virulence factors and allowed it to infect the lower respiratory tract and have an 11% fatality rate (Vincent, 2020).

This article states that while we do not know where 2019-nCoV (the “n” for novel) falls on the scale of human-to-human transmission, it is crucial to have an aggressive response to this event. In my opinion, this warrants the attention to inform the public of sanitary practices. I think that this falls on the shoulders of health care providers, news reporters, and health organizations such as the WHO mentioned above. While it may pose a lower health threat on the individual person, the article concludes that it has a high risk on the population level and therefore strong action is required.

As a final note, I just received a news report stating that the WHO declared the coronavirus as a global health emergency, therefore making it more imperative that health measures are followed and the public is aware of prevention methods.