Current Challenges of the 2019-COVID Pandemic: Where We Started, Where We Are, and Where do We Go?

Abstract

The current outbreak of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease has disrupted the world. Many studies, clinical trials, and updates have been published with the goal of sharing information that will help prepare the world’s healthcare systems for the flood of patients expected to be infected with covid-19. The goal of this literature review is to provide an extensive summary of the most recent reports and studies since the initial outbreak and provide the most up-to-date understanding of the various aspects of covid-19—its spread, diagnosis, risk factors, and currently available and effective treatment strategies—with the hope that researchers and medical practitioners can use this a branching point to other studies that our outlined here. Symptom management is currently the primary strategy that is being implemented for covid-19 treatment, especially in patients who have developed severe disease. Many promising strategies to treat covid-19 are currently being investigated while a vaccine is under development. Anti-inflammatory drugs like sarilumab and antiviral drugs like chloroquine are undergoing clinical trials, and under an emergency protocol of the US FDA, practitioners can use the antibodies from plasma in covid-19 survivors to treat those infected.