SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. A pandemic review
Abstract: A new danger place all humanity on alert, challenging the best of it to fight the battle; it is the mutation of a new virus SARS-CoV-2, the third to cross barriers in less than two decades to infect humans. Started at the end of the year 2019 apparently in the wholesale seafood and fish market of Wuhan in China, it has spread throughout the globe, seriously affecting Europe and currently the American Continent and putting in check the health systems of all nations with an exponential growth in cases which will soon add more than a million and a half cases worlwide in a short period of time, most of them with active infection, a changing case fatality rate, many unanswered key questions, a substantial risk of nosocomial transmission, a basic reproductive number (R0) greater than 1, and no specific treatment to offer. Intensive care units are expected to receive increasing numbers of critically ill patients never before seen in the modern history of medicine, testing their strength, organization, and responsiveness with imagination, talent, work, dedication, and passion. An attempt is made to make a global review of the subject in order to better focus the problem we are currently facing worldwide, and hopefully, will allow us to ask research questions that are feasible to answer in a more or less short period of time through good randomized and controlled research protocols. Only with collaborative work and applying the scientific method in a shrewd and intelligent way, we can come out ahead of this terrible threat that shows us again how fragile our human nature is and the importance of staying within physiological ranges throughout our life.
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Format: | Digital revista |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Colegio Mexicano de Medicina Crítica A.C.
2020
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Online Access: | http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2448-89092020000100053 |
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Summary: | Abstract: A new danger place all humanity on alert, challenging the best of it to fight the battle; it is the mutation of a new virus SARS-CoV-2, the third to cross barriers in less than two decades to infect humans. Started at the end of the year 2019 apparently in the wholesale seafood and fish market of Wuhan in China, it has spread throughout the globe, seriously affecting Europe and currently the American Continent and putting in check the health systems of all nations with an exponential growth in cases which will soon add more than a million and a half cases worlwide in a short period of time, most of them with active infection, a changing case fatality rate, many unanswered key questions, a substantial risk of nosocomial transmission, a basic reproductive number (R0) greater than 1, and no specific treatment to offer. Intensive care units are expected to receive increasing numbers of critically ill patients never before seen in the modern history of medicine, testing their strength, organization, and responsiveness with imagination, talent, work, dedication, and passion. An attempt is made to make a global review of the subject in order to better focus the problem we are currently facing worldwide, and hopefully, will allow us to ask research questions that are feasible to answer in a more or less short period of time through good randomized and controlled research protocols. Only with collaborative work and applying the scientific method in a shrewd and intelligent way, we can come out ahead of this terrible threat that shows us again how fragile our human nature is and the importance of staying within physiological ranges throughout our life. |
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