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SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19
Published in Patricia G. Melloy, Viruses and Society, 2023
The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic will also potentially cause us to revisit past works of art with a new perspective. In the past, when I talked about emerging viruses with my students and showed clips from the movie Contagion in class, we focused on how a virus might emerge from a new interaction between an animal and people (Soderbergh 2011). However, we did not discuss what might really happen six months, one year, or two years later if that virus were to be transmitted unchecked through the human population and then thrive. Even though we are now experiencing it, it was hard to imagine how we, as a society, would deal with the fallout from such a catastrophic event.
Synthesis and Characterization of Nanoparticles as Potential Viral and Antiviral Agents
Published in Devarajan Thangadurai, Saher Islam, Charles Oluwaseun Adetunji, Viral and Antiviral Nanomaterials, 2022
Deepthi Panoth, Sindhu Thalappan Manikkoth, Fabeena Jahan, Kunnambeth Madam Thulasi, Anjali Paravannoor, Baiju Kizhakkekilikoodayil Vijayan
Viral diseases are the greatest threat to human health and economy, and thus, it’s essential to address the issues emerging viruses cause. This chapter highlights the recent developments of the synthesis of viral and antiviral nanoparticles, including inorganic nanoparticles like metal nanoparticles and metal-oxide nanoparticles and organic nanoparticles like polymeric, liposomes, dendrimers, etc. The characterization and antiviral mechanism of nanoparticles will be discussed as well.
A Way Forward
Published in Rae-Ellen W. Kavey, Allison B. Kavey, Viral Pandemics, 2020
Rae-Ellen W. Kavey, Allison B. Kavey
In this book, we have concentrated on viruses that have caused epidemics since the beginning of the twentieth century. We have seen that emerging and re-emerging viruses are causing increasingly frequent viral disease outbreaks in people and in animals. In this chapter, we integrate the biologic and environmental factors that emerged through analysis of the pandemics in this book to create a composite picture of the state of viral infectious disease outbreaks after Ebola. To begin, a biogeographic analysis of a 33-year data set of human infectious diseases from the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network included 12,202 outbreaks of 215 different diseases.3 The analysis showed the total number of outbreaks increased exponentially between 1980 and 2014 with the greatest increase in viral pathogens and significant increases in zoonotic diseases and in both vector-borne and non-vector-borne disease.
Modern vaccine strategies for emerging zoonotic viruses
Published in Expert Review of Vaccines, 2022
Atif Ahmed, Muhammad Safdar, Samran Sardar, Sahar Yousaf, Fiza Farooq, Ali Raza, Muhammad Shahid, Kausar Malik, Samia Afzal
The risk of disease emergence from animal reservoirs is clearly and continuously increasing in the last few decades, posing a serious threat to public health. The high mutability rate is responsible for their enormous diversity, prolonged survival, and extensive dissemination. Zoonotic viruses are exceptionally well adapted to humans, as the variant becomes dilute in the environment over time, successive variants appear with more infectivity and dissemination potential. Therefore, it is a requirement of time and public health to launch a program of genetic surveillance, which continuously notes the pattern of evolution of the virus. These systems should be established in the different continents of the world, which continuously follow the patterns of virus evolvement in major animal reservoirs. Surveillance seems to be the most advanced approach to effective control programs and containment of emerging viruses before spill over into the human population. Moreover, massive animal vaccination programs should be launched where the perceived risk of zoonosis has been raised.
Lessons for hospital care from the first wave of COVID-19 in Ontario, Canada
Published in Hospital Practice, 2021
Hospitals in Canada were generally able to manage the first wave of COVID–19, despite confusion and chaos. The most important enablers of success were the reduction in hospital occupancy, relatively strong infection prevention and control teams and policies that had been mandated after SARS in 2003-2004 [17], and timely public health measures, which reduced the number of patients with COVID-19 requiring hospitalization. Based on lessons learned from the first wave, hospitals became better prepared for future waves of COVID-19. Wards and care teams were reorganized to care for patients with COVID-19. Hospital surge and staffing plans were established, PPE supply chains became more secure, and disease transmission, testing, and treatment became better understood. Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 prioritized healthcare workers in an effort to protect the workforce. However, acute care capacity remains a critical potential failure point. Surges in demand related to COVID-19 may place untenable strain on both physical infrastructure and a workforce that has experienced high rates of burnout. Lessons from Ontario are relevant for many other jurisdictions who have experienced similar cyclical waves of COVID-19. Emerging virus variants, which are more transmissible and severe [19], may exacerbate the pressures on acute care hospitals. Research devoted to understanding how to manage hospital operations during the pandemic should remain an important priority, and communities of practice to support knowledge exchange may help strengthen the hospital pandemic response.
Hypothetical emergence of poliovirus in 2020: part 1. Consequences of policy decisions to respond using nonpharmaceutical interventions
Published in Expert Review of Vaccines, 2021
Kimberly M. Thompson, Dominika A. Kalkowska, Kamran Badizadegan
Importantly, these conclusions occur independent of the clinical behavior of the nWPV serotype. Figure 4 (panels on the right) showed the consequences of the different reproduction numbers (R0s) and different disease severity (paralysis-to-infection ratios or PIRs) for nWPV serotypes 1, 2, and 3. However, all three serotypes spread through the global population at an approximately comparable time scale (Figure 4, panels on the left). The actual observed experience for a newly emerged neurotropic enterovirus would depend on its properties. Thus, if a virus emerged with the same transmission routes and types of immunological responses as we assumed for nWPV but with a much smaller PIR (e.g. on the order of 1 per million instead of 1 per thousand), then the burden of disease could remain very low and difficult to detect as clinically significant. This explains why some emerging viruses may potentially spread through the global population as an undetected novel/emerging disease or a subclinical infection altogether (e.g. mysterious cases of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) for a neurotropic enterovirus, or undetected pneumonias masked or appearing as a ‘bad flu season’ for a respiratory virus).