Article by : Dr.Mohammad Miraj* and Dr.Shaima Ali Miraj
*College of Applied Medical Sciences, Majmaah University, Majmah, Saudi Arabia and Public Health Department, College of Health Sciences, Saudi Electronic University, Riyadh Saudi Arabia

The Prologue:

The worldwide research being carried out so dedicatedly by those who are affected: The US, China, Canada, UK and the rest of the world will certainly outpace and defeat the viral epidemic. There is light despite all the darkness! Mankind has witnessed three epidemics recently – severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China in 2002-04,the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) which started in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and the latest, Corona Viral Disease (Co-ViD19) which started in China too in Nov 2019. It has affected more than 800,000 people over 170 countries till date – the common thread lies in the fact that all of them belong to the same family, “Corona Viruses”. The crown shaped viruses (hence the name Corona) measures approximately 60 – 140 nm India meter, has a single long stranded RNA of a genome and a nucleo-capsid of helical symmetry (genome size ranging from 27 – 34 kilo bases in length). It has spike of glycoproteins on the envelope and is a group of related viruses that causes diseases in mammals and birds and recently is creating a havoc in humans too. Based on genetic and antigenic criteria, CoVs have been organised into four groups: α-CoVs, β-CoVs, γ-CoVs and ∆-CoVs and till date seven human CoVs (HCoVs: HCoV-OC43,and HCoV-HKU1 (beta CoVs of the A lineage); HCoV-229E, and HCoV-NL63 (alpha CoVs); SARS-CoV, SARSCoV-2, and MERS-CoV (beta CoVs of the B and C lineage, respectively) capable of infecting humans have been identified (Chen, Liu and Guo, 2020; Chan et al., 2020). Novel Covid-19 is the most dreadful among all types of Corona viruses so far. The first wave of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is currently invading the world, and several countries are now struggling to fight it or trying to delay its start to help smooth its peak size for the purpose of lowering morbidity and mortality, and thereby reduce the overall tension on their healthcare system, (Flahault, 2020). Since then, the virus has spread over 170 countries and WHO has declared it as global public health emergency on Jan 30th, 2020. By Feb 9th, death toll in China surpassed that of 2002-2003 SARS epidemic with 811 deaths recorded and by Feb 12th, 2020, corona virus cases started to spike in South Korea and by Feb 19th and 21st 2020 both in Iran and Italy respectively, the outbreak began on a horrible note. Since then after one month i.e. on March 20 and 21st, Italy has reported its highest death toll of 627 and 793 respectively on a single day (Secon et al 2020). Despite, the original source of the outbreak remains unknown and during the past three weeks, new major epidemic foci of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), some without traceable origin, have been identified and are rapidly expanding in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East. On the basis of alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction”, on March 11, 2020, the Director General of WHO characterised the COVID-19 situation as a pandemic. Currently, authorities have reported with 803,696 positive cases with about 592,192 being active and among ongoing cases, there are roughly, 172,434 recoveries and 39,070 deaths as per the report on 31st March, 2020 (Worldometers Info, 2020).

Since the advent of SARS which affected more than 8000cases around 26 countries in 2003, an insurgence in the infectious disease is evident worldwide. MERS (Middle-east Respiratory Syndrome) Viral outbreak in 2012 affected Saudi Arabia and other countries in the GCC whereas Ebola Virus (2013-2016) affected West Africa particularly the countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Later in 2015-16, Zika Virus epidemic affected hundreds and thousands of people in Brazil and South and North America in 2015-16, (Marston et al., 2017).However, this time with Corona infection, which has taken the shape of a pandemic, the impact is devastating that has shattered businesses, stilled production, stopped travel, emptied public spaces, crashed economies and broken healthcare systems across the world, however the full blown impact is yet to be evaluated. The underlying fact across all these uprisings is to understand what makes the viruses potentially so threating and what needs to be done to curb them. Among all the potential causes, reported in large number of literature, one common factor that has been observed is that the interaction of the modern human beings with the environment around them has contributed to the success of dangerous viruses. It is a well-known fact that any virus will replicate only when it’s been inside the cell of a living being, and spreads most efficiently when there is contact between two individuals. This one the COVID 19, hijacks human lung cells to produce more viruses and their copies, attaching by its spikes to the receptors on human respiratory cells. The viruses in suitable environments can replicate almost instantaneously and in huge numbers, contributing to high rate of mutations. Nevertheless, this invisible, very intelligent predator has been also known to adapt quite quickly to an adverse environment, such as the human immune system or drugs thereby allowing the virus to jump from an animal host to humans contributing to the spread of disease, which might have happened most likely in the case of the spread of Covid-19 and therefore has been seen as the most reliable explanation for the match of the corona virus genome of humans with that of bats and pangolins with 95% and 99% accuracy, (Burki 2020).

The impact of the global pandemic can be assessed from the fact that this virus took 67 days to infect the first 100,000 people while the next got infected in only 11days. The number reached to 300,000 in another 4 days whereas the 400,000 figure touched in meagre 3 days. The number touched 5 lakhs in just 2.5 days and in the next 48 hours infected the next lakh taking the toll to 6 lakh people, a phenomenon quite unprecedented, (Business Today Report 28th March,2020). Among the various countries, on one hand the developed economies such as Italy, Spain, UK, Iran and now USA are facing their biggest humanitarian crisis, the developing nations in South Asia including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Africa in the West which account for almost 14% of the world population are bracing for a head on collision with the corona virus and effects would be known only in next few weeks, (Kumar 2020; Signe and Fakim 2020).