The Wuhan 2019-nCOV
(SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19)
Outbreak
Coronavirus 2020
What is really happening
and how to prevent it
(updated February 12 th , 2020)
By
Grayson Wick
Copyright 2020 Grayson Wick
All rights reserved.
ISBN:
Table of Contents
Coronavirus A brief introduction
The latest outbreak of Coronavirus in China has brought the virus into the limelight again. Wuhan, China, remains the epicenter of this outbreak. Before we proceed further and discuss the virus and its recent outbreak in detail, it appears much more prudent to create a general understanding of the reader about the Coronavirus. Hailing from a large family of viruses, Coronaviruses can cause respiratory illnesses. While the symptoms range from mild to moderate, most people do get infected with this virus in their lifetime, but in severe cases, the virus is known to be the reason behind pneumonia and bronchitis, a lower-respiratory tract illnesses.
While these viruses are shared among animals worldwide, yet only a handful of them is known to affect humans. The possibility of an animal to human transmission is infrequent, but the virus has the potential to evolve to such an extent. This is precisely what happened when the Coronaviruses known to bring the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) affected and infected humans with these severe acute respiratory syndromes. The lastest form of these viruses has its origin in China.
These Coronaviruses were first discovered in the 1960s; the earliest one's infected chickens: infectious bronchitis virus, later two other viruses were discovered from the nasal cavities of humans and thus named human Coronavirus 229E and OC43. A few other members of this family have also been branded, including SARS-CoV, HCoV NL63, HKU1, MERS-CoV, and now the 2019-nCoV. All most all of these have been linked to severe respiratory tract infections.
On the last day of December 2019, a novel strain of Coronavirus was officially designated as 2019-nCoV by the World Health Organization (WHO). This virus was reported in Wuhan, China. Furthermore, this is the origin and possible cause for the 201920 Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak.
This book aims to create awareness among the masses regarding the virus. This introductory chapter shall be followed by a much detailed discussion about the CORONAVIRUS 2020 and later, an in-depth scientific analysis of this virus shall be presented for the consumption of the masses. To adhere to the title of the book, the other half of the book shall focus on the outbreak of the virus by citing the reported cases and listing the affected countries. The subsequent measures adopted by different countries shall be reviewed and, in the end, a comprehensive discussion about the guidelines to protect from and prevent the spread of this virus.
Coronavirus - 2020
In late December 2019, cases of the pneumonia-like virus were first reported in Wuhan, China. Since then, the virus was spread like wildfire, affecting not only other parts of China but spreading its venom across the globe. Many countries, including Japan, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, the United States, Australia, France, Malaysia, and Pakistan are among those infected. As per the New York Times by the 25 th of January about 1,300 confirmed cases and nearly 41 deaths linked to the 2019-nCoV virus in China have been reported. As per BNO News (https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/) by the 12 th of February confirmed cases and deaths grew to 45,171 and 1,115 respectively, involving 24 different countries all over the World with 441 confirmed cases and 1 death out of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
An earlier study suggested that snakes might be the source of the new Coronavirus causing an outbreak in China and this will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. The outbreak of this virus in China would have occurred when people visited the local seafood and animal wet market in Wuhan, where very low hygienic measures are taken and different wild and farmed animals are kept together and slaughtered in horrific conditions. Also bats and, recently, pangolins have been suspected to be the source of this virus, thus it is thought that the transmission sequence is from animal to human.
Nevertheless, doubts exist about the possibility that this Novel Coronavirus could have been artificially engineered and released deliberately or by accident, so that on February 4 th the White House asked American scientists and medical researchers to investigate its origin. Infact, this Coronavirus holds some strange biochemical and genomic features in common with the HIV virus and, quite suspiciously, Wuhan is the home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology with a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory which could be useful to develop both vaccines and biologic weapons.
The researchers have named this virus as 2019-nCoV and compared its genetic sequence with more than 200 other variants of the Coronavirus to confirm its origination from snakes infected by bats.
So the question comes to mind that is this 2019-nCoV, similar to MERS and SARS? The fact is that both MERS and SARS cause very severe symptoms, while the severity of symptoms for this new virus is still partly known.
There have been cases where people were asymptomatic or have shown mild symptoms while then it has caused death, thus confirming its severity.
However, there is one common element among the three: they all can be transmitted through close contact. MERS is transmitted from touching the infected camels or consuming their meat or milk. It was first reported in 2012 in Saudi Arabia and has mostly been limited to the Arabian Peninsula. While SARS which was first reported in 2002 in southern China (with no new cases have been reported since the year 2004) and is supposed to have spread from bats that infected civets.
In the days of the outbreak of SARS, one out of every ten people were infected. The rate of infection and death rate for the 2019-nCoV is however not yet well known, also because data delivered by the Chinese regime could be not very accurate due to political reasons.
The fact to be considered here is the age of patients who have died due to this virus. The infected people were older than 60 and also showed preexisting conditions. However, deaths among the young have also occurred.
The common symptoms of this new Coronavirus include fever, cough, and considerable difficulty in breathing. These symptoms are comparable to those triggered by SARS.
Having mentioned the similarities, it is essential to mention the differences. Upper respiratory tract symptoms are absent such as the runny nose, sneezing, and sore throat and intestinal symptoms such as diarrhea, These symptoms were common among those infected by SARS.
Also, in some cases ocular hyperemia (conjuntivitis) was reported, suggesting that infected droplets dispersed by sick people when coughing could spread the virus to other people by infecting them through their eyes.
Moreover, the new strain could be airborne and some studies show that Coronaviruses can persist on inanimate surfaces for up to 9 days, even though they can be inactivated by disinfection procedures with biocidal agents such as ethanol, hydrogen peroxide or sodium hypochlorite, while others such as benzalkonium chloride or chlorhexidine digluconate could be less effective.
Sadly, no specific treatments exist for Coronavirus, so either people recover on their own or succumb to the infection. Small things such as a humidifier or hot shower are helpful in sore throat, and cough. Drinking a lot many fluids is also considered beneficial. Some institutes have claimed to be in the initial phases of developing the vaccine, like the National Institutes of Health in the USA, but nothing substantial has materialized till now and some experts say that no vaccine will be available before 18 months at least.
