Covid-19: Critical Lessons for the Survival of Mankind from the Present and Future Pneumonic Viral Infections

Abstract

Covid-19, the short for Coronavirus Disease (occurring in) 2019, hit the world with a bang, beginning from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in China. Tracing the history, the first case (P-zero) was detected on December 8, 2019 (now recognized to be a woman of 57 years, who sold shrimps in the Huanan market admitted in the Wuhan Union Hospital on December 10 and diagnosed on December 31 with Covid-19) before several workers from the Huanan seafood market started to fall sick with fever and respiratory symptoms of shortness of breath, sneezing and cough, and some with dyspnea and signs of pneumonitis.[1] [2] Three weeks later on December 31, Wuhan Health Authorities announced a series of 21 cases of suspected pneumonia of unknown origin, all linked to seafood market, and notified to the World Health Organization (WHO) country office in China.[2] [3] The disease appeared to be highly infectious, causing considerable anxiety among physicians. Within a month, 41 patients were getting treatment for this unique infection in the Wuhan Union Hospital, where one of them died in the meantime (but the P-zero is still surviving). Due to fast-spreading transmission events, Covid-19 cases were widespread not only across mainland China but also beyond Chinese borders by January 21, 2020, as a result of symptomatic/asymptomatic international or national travelers returning to their native countries or other states of China, respectively. On January 30, 2020, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee (IHREC) of WHO declared the disease epidemic as Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), because as of January 27, more than 2000 cases had been diagnosed in several other countries, besides China and Hongkong: Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Nepal, Macao, Australia, France, Canada, and US. Most of these patients were living in, visited Wuhan, or were their contacts.[1] [2] [3] Human-to-human transmission was confirmed.[4]