Abstract
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a global health crisis. The scientific community has responded with a sizable level of research and publications, many of which are beginning to be identified and analyzed in systematic reviews of the literature and bibliometric studies. No readily identifiable, comparable study focused on Latin American scientific literature has been undertaken thus far. Therefore, this article analyzes such literature, focused on COVID-19, and one that has been published in the scientific journals of the region. A search with the keyword “COVID-19” in the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) database resulted in the identification of 261 documents. Following PRISMA guidelines, the total number was reduced to 117 for the purpose of the bibliometric analysis (i.e., elimination of preprint duplicates). Such analysis resulted in the following findings: 69 publications were editorial or individual commentaries, and 48 were original articles. The male authors totaled 280, contrasted with 169 female authors. Two Brazilian journals led in the number of publications: Cadernos de Saúde Pública and Clinics. Even though the Latin American scientific productivity regarding COVID-19 is not well represented in the different databases of the region, it is expected that these scientific publications will achieve increased visibility in the coming months. The article emphasizes the importance of systematic and bibliographic reviews of the scientific literature in Latin America in order to evaluate the public health achievements of the region.
Highlights
In the previous two decades several viral epidemics have challenged the health of the world population, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the strain of swine flu called H1N1, and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) [1,2]
People infected with SARS-CoV-2 may remain asymptomatic for up to five days, some may experience clinical symptoms within a week including dry cough, fever, headache, nasal congestion, and fatigue, while others may progress into severe COVID-19 symptoms such as septic shock, pulmonary edema, pneumonia, and respiratory failure [6,7]
COVID-19 has had a global impact on various aspects of people’s lives, the economy, governments, and societies, but it has raised countless public health problems at the national, regional, and international levels. This has generated an important mobilization of human resources, assigned to address different aspects of the problems raised by COVID-19: from health personnel allocated to attend to the diverse needs of the population to thousands of scientists who are searching for different medical and social solutions
Summary
In the previous two decades several viral epidemics have challenged the health of the world population, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the strain of swine flu called H1N1, and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) [1,2]. In December of 2019, reports of a new disease out of Wuhan, China began to circulate, this time caused by a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and labelled COVID-19 (CO for corona, VI for virus, D for disease and 19 for the year it was identified) [3,4]. Since those initial reports, the virus has been found in 188 countries, infecting well over 6 million people and causing close to 400,000 deaths as of May 31, 2020 (source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html). Due to its high contagion potential and the exponential increase in its incidence, the World Health
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