Byounghyun (Kevin) Lee - Jeju
As for the past few weeks, the Coronavirus has been dominating the headlines allowing everyone around the globe to be aware and extra precautious with how they sanitize and retain each ones’ health. Started in December and even until now, the virus is altering the stake of a number of countries to varying degrees including U.S.A, Brazil, Russia, U.K, Spain, Italy, and South Korea. Especially, during the start of March, Spain started with no infected cases which then the virus spread and Spain ended up with nearly 200,000 cases at the start of April. As other countries besides Spain are in jeopardy likewise due to the monstrous spread of the virus, cynical views started to take over the hope of whether the virus can be prevented or come to a halt to a certain degree so that countries around the globe are brought down to safer circumstances.
COVID-19 is the name of the disease and the virus that causes it is called SARS-CoV-2. Currently, a lot of individuals around the world are investigating, searching, examining the nature of the virus and how it can be confined from spreading or rather not getting the disease at all. According to an international team in America, in the result of analysing sequences from 781 coronaviruses isolated from bats in China, they have ratified that horseshoe bats are an important stockpile and a reservoir of any SARS-related viruses. An analysis of the coronavirus from bats, pangolins and humans shows that these viruses related to SARS are conditional and dependent to similar evolutionary constraints. It showed that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) required the structure that slowed it to penetrate human cells through recombining with a pangolin coronavirus.
For now, a bit less than half of the infections are showing asymptomatic signs meaning the patient procures no symptoms what so ever. Yet, the virus can be still transmitted and live up to 14 days or more. Some researchers even claim that the disease can be relatively more dangerous and infectious to a certain type of genes. The analysis that followed in order to prove the statement was a genome-wide analysis executed by a European group of researchers. A genome-wide analysis is a study to see if any variant is in association with a trait of a genome-wide set of genetic variants in different individuals. According to the analysis which analysed 2,000 Italian and Spanish patients, it was found out that patients with A-type blood were at higher risk of developing respiratory stress while O-type blood was protective. A-type blood is the blood that contains type-A antigens with the rhesus factor which is a type of protein. This blood type is also one of the most common blood types amongst the world population but especially amongst Europeans. Subsequently, the analysis showed that Europeans were more likely to get infected by the virus however the reasons for this are still unknown.
The treatment or rather the “vaccine” is currently still in progress of production. Imperial College is starting to perform clinical trials for its “self-amplifying” mRNA vaccine this month with 300 volunteers to progress into human trials. However, the “vaccine” is still not durable until the correct antibodies are found and injected into a human body. Before getting to actually progress into human trials, there are a couple of things to bear in mind. Things for instance, whether the patients are appropriately fit for the trials or even the downside to injecting the vaccines as well.
Besides “vaccines” or “cures”, there are other treatments that could work in order to prevent the disease from spreading or deteriorating. One of the examples is Remdesivir. This is a treatment that could prevent the progression from just having the disease to having pneumonia in addition. BTK inhibitor is another example of treatment and it is a protein which is involved in the activation of macrophages. Macrophages are part of our first line of immune defence. This treatment can be a benefit for the patient as it can be effective in preventing the disease to get worse within the patient. The downside of this treatment is that it only works for a small portion of the human population. Another treatment that is currently the biggest issue is Hydroxychloroquine. Based on the theoretical probability, this treatment was one of those treatments that grabbed most of the world’s attention. Yet, according to the three trials that took place, the efficiency was not so great as it was expected to be. All three trials showed that the treatment with hydroxychloroquine had no benefit for patients hospitalized with the disease as the mortality rates were fairly similar among the 1,500 patients who had the treatment.
As for now, the WHO announced that they will continue to test the hydroxychloroquine after some adjustments. The WHO carefully predicts that the duration for the vaccines to actually be popularized and used, it will take from 12 months to at least 18 months. Hence, the current situation leaves us with a note to stay home and try not to leave your homes until the spread starts to decline and the number of patients drops.
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