Pandemics In Human History Research Articles

Social Media Efficacy in Crisis Management: Effectiveness of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions to Manage COVID-19 Challenges.

The new identified virus COVID-19 has become one of the most contagious diseases in human history. The ongoing coronavirus has created severe threats to global mental health, which have resulted in crisis management challenges and international concerns related to health issues. As of September 9, 2021, there were over 223.4 million patients with COVID-19, including 4.6 million deaths and over 200 million recovered patients reported worldwide, which has made the COVID-19 outbreak one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. The aggressive public health implementations endorsed various precautionary safety and preventive strategies to suppress and minimize COVID-19 disease transmission. The second, third, and fourth waves of COVID-19 continue to pose global challenges to crisis management, as its evolution and implications are still unfolding. This study posits that examining the strategic ripostes and pandemic experiences sheds light on combatting this global emergency. This study recommends two model strategies that help reduce the adverse effects of the pandemic on the immune systems of the general population. This present paper recommends NPI interventions (non-pharmaceutical intervention) to combine various measures, such as the suppression strategy (lockdown and restrictions) and mitigation model to decrease the burden on health systems. The current COVID-19 health crisis has influenced all vital economic sectors and developed crisis management problems. The global supply of vaccines is still not sufficient to manage this global health emergency. In this crisis, NPIs are helpful to manage the spillover impacts of the pandemic. It articulates the prominence of resilience and economic and strategic agility to resume economic activities and resolve healthcare issues. This study primarily focuses on the role of social media to tackle challenges and crises posed by COVID-19 on economies, business activities, healthcare burdens, and government support for societies to resume businesses, and implications for global economic and healthcare provision disruptions. This study suggests that intervention strategies can control the rapid spread of COVID-19 with hands-on crisis management measures, and the healthcare system will resume normal conditions quickly. Global economies will revitalize scientific contributions and collaborations, including social science and business industries, through government support.

SARS-CoV-2: International Investigation Under the WHO or BWC.

In late 2019, the novel and highly infectious coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 caused a worldwide outbreak of a severe respiratory infectious disease, known as COVID-19. The disease has started in China and turned into one of the worst pandemics in human history. Due to the very fast global spread of the pathogen, COVID-19 is a great challenge for the Public Health Systems. It had led to a variety of severe limitations in private and public life worldwide. There is a lively public debate about possible sources of SARS-CoV-2. This article aims at providing a better understanding of controversial biological and political issues regarding COVID-19. Recommendations are made for possible actions under the umbrella of the World Health Organization and in respect to the Biological Weapons Convention.

COVID-19 Surveiller: toward a robust and effective pandemic surveillance system basedon social media mining.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has become one of the most severe pandemics in human history. In this paper, we propose to leverage social media users as social sensors to simultaneously predict the pandemic trends and suggest potential risk factors for public health experts to understand spread situations and recommend proper interventions. More precisely, we develop novel deep learning models to recognize important entities and their relations over time, thereby establishing dynamic heterogeneous graphs to describe the observations of social media users. A dynamic graph neural network model can then forecast the trends (e.g. newly diagnosed cases and death rates) and identify high-risk events from social media. Based on the proposed computational method, we also develop a web-based system for domain experts without any computer science background to easily interact with. We conduct extensive experiments on large-scale datasets of COVID-19 related tweets provided by Twitter, which show that our method can precisely predict the new cases and death rates. We also demonstrate the robustness of our web-based pandemic surveillance system and its ability to retrieve essential knowledge and derive accurate predictions across a variety of circumstances. Our system is also available at http://scaiweb.cs.ucla.edu/covidsurveiller/.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Data science approachs to infectious disease surveillance’.

A new approach in identifying the psychological impact of COVID-19 on university student’s academic performance

COVID-19 was first discovered in Wuhan, China on December 2019. It is one of the worst pandemics in human history. The education sector is one of the sectors most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators and students worldwide were forced to shift to online learning. Students, in particular, have suffered from the psychological impacts and learning difficulties caused by the lockdowns imposed by governments to control the pandemic. In this study, we used statistics and machine learning approaches to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on educations systems especially on university students’ psychological health. For this purpose, a questionnaire was created,which consisted of two primary parts. The first part collects the participant’s demographic and educational characteristics, while the second part gathers information about five primary dimensions: the use of digital devices, sleep habits, social communication, emotional mental state, and academic performance. The questionnaire was distributed to university students in three Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. A total of 1766 responses were returned and analyzed using statistical and machine learning approaches. The results showed an evident correlation between student’s psychological health and the use of online education during the time COVID-19. The results also showed that there is a positive relationship between digital tools used for online education and the academic performance of students during the time of COVID-19. Finally, the results highlighted the harmful impacts of COVID-19 on the education systems. The study ends by presenting suggestions and recommendations needed to improve the current online education system. Moreover, it is warranted for universities to have a role in helping students respond to the pandemic in a healthier psychological performance.

Viral Inactivation Using Visible to UV Upconversion Nanomaterials and Application in Self-Cleaning Anti-Viral Nanofilms on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to Mitigate Coronavirus Spread

COVID-19 has become one of the deadliest pandemics in human history and has taken a tremendous toll on human life in large part due to its ability to transmit through the air and from surface to surface. We developed a novel conformal nano-coating on PPE surfaces intended to capture and kill (inactivate) COVID-19 viruses on PPE surfaces. Disinfection and Sterilization has long been done using UV radiation. Taking inspiration from this conventional method, we came up with a product that can produce UV radiation locally and regeneratively, a visible to UV Upconversion Nanomaterial (UCNP). The idea here is to expose viruses to localized UV radiation (within the mutagenic range) to kill or deactivate them. In our work, we developed a Yttrium Orthosilicate-based UCNP. These nanoparticles were coated on PPE surfaces and cationic and anionic polymers using the layer by layer (LBL) coating method. An oligosaccharide species, chosen to possess strong bond affinity/complementarity to novel coronavirus S glycoprotein, was grafted to the polymer using functional groups/sites via click chemistry to add one more mechanism of virus inactivation. In our testing, two formulations, Y2SiO5(1% Pr, 1% Gd) and Y2SiO5 (1.2% Pr, 1.2% Gd, 7.2% Li) have reduced active coronavirus viral load 4*104 to 0 in an hour of exposure to white light.

Pandemics and Post-Pandemic Times

This essay investigates some of the major pandemics in human history and scrutinizes their sociological, economic, and political pay-offs. To what extent can pandemics transform our society? How do the pandemics in history relate to the current? The Plague of Athens caused disappointment towards Greek gods since the Athenians felt they were not getting enough support from Apollo. The Plague of Justinian brought revolts across the empire and led to the end of Classical Antiquity. The Black Death changed the future vision of Europeans significantly because death was omnipresent. Although the death toll of cholera pandemic was limited, it triggered stigmatization, violence, and racism towards Asian people, especially to Indians. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés would never have been able to colonize the Aztec civilization without the smallpox outbreak. After an episode of absurdism and Dadaism, the Spanish flu brought the Roaring Twenties with widespread use of radio, dance-halls, jazz, Harlem Renaissance, gay and lesbian scenes, and women’s suffrage. Coronavirus pandemic shows that society is digitizing at light speed among the art world. This essay also shows that our economy is a positive-sum economy in contrast to the zero-sum economy in times of the Black Death and before. There is also a delicate balance that must be maintained between keeping the pandemic under control and respecting the democratic principles. The essay concludes that each pandemic has an idiosyncratic nature and a pandemic can have different effects in different societies or regions in the world.

Two-dimensional mathematical framework for evaporation dynamics of respiratory droplets.

In majority of pandemics in human history, respiratory bio-aerosol is the most common route of transmission of diseases. These tiny droplets ejected through mouth and nose from an infected person during exhalation process like coughing, sneezing, speaking, and breathing consist of pathogens and a complex mixture of volatile and nonvolatile substances. A cloud of droplets ejected in such an event gets transmitted in the air, causing a series of coupled thermo-physical processes. Contemplating an individual airborne droplet in the cloud, boundary layers and wakes develop due to relative motion between the droplet and the ambient air. The complex phenomenon of the droplet's dynamics, such as shear-driven internal circulation of the liquid phase and Stefan flow due to vaporization or condensation, comes into effect. In this study, we present a mathematical description of the coupled subprocesses, including droplet aerodynamics, heat, and mass transfer, which were identified and subsequently solved. The presented two-dimensional model gives a complete analysis encompassing the gas phase coupled with the liquid phase responsible for the airborne droplet kinetics in the ambient environment. The transient inhomogeneity of temperature and concentration distribution in the liquid phase caused due to the convective and diffusive transports are captured in the 2D model. The evaporation time and distance traveled by droplets prior to nuclei or aerosol formation are computed for major geographical locations around the globe for nominal-windy conditions. The model presented can be used for determining the evaporation timescale of any viral or bacterial laden respiratory droplets across any geographical location.

The Pandemic Year 2020: World Map of Coronavirus Research.

BackgroundSARS-CoV-2 is one of the most threatening pandemics in human history. As of the date of this analysis, it had claimed about 2 million lives worldwide, and the number is rising sharply. Governments, societies, and scientists are equally challenged under this burden.ObjectiveThis study aimed to map global coronavirus research in 2020 according to various influencing factors to highlight incentives or necessities for further research.MethodsThe application of established and advanced bibliometric methods combined with the visualization technique of density-equalizing mapping provided a global picture of incentives and efforts on coronavirus research in 2020. Countries’ funding patterns and their epidemiological and socioeconomic characteristics as well as their publication performance data were included.ResultsResearch output exploded in 2020 with momentum, including citation and networking parameters. China and the United States were the countries with the highest publication performance. Globally, however, publication output correlated significantly with COVID-19 cases. Research funding has also increased immensely.ConclusionsNonetheless, the abrupt decline in publication efforts following previous coronavirus epidemics should demonstrate to global researchers that they should not lose interest even after containment, as the next epidemiological challenge is certain to come. Validated reporting worldwide and the inclusion of low-income countries are additionally important for a successful future research strategy.

Risk contagion of COVID-19 in Japanese firms: A network approach

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is one of the worst pandemics in human history. Our research objective is to assess the contagion effect on Japanese firms and to evaluate the Japanese government's COVID-19 measures during the period from April 7, 2020, to May 25, 2020. We propose a susceptible-infected-recovered-dead model for COVID-19 and derive COVID-19 parameters for Japan. Subsequently, we analyze the effect of COVID-19 on Japanese firms through correlation-based network and credit risk analyses. The main findings are that the Tokyo Stock Price Index moved in the opposite direction of COVID-19 parameters and COVID-19 parameters are almost the only risk factors that impact a firm's credit risk during the period. Finally, we find that the interconnection analysis between the COVID-19 infection network and the financial networks contribute to the existing pandemic risk management knowledge.

Covid-19 Pandemic and Investigation of Artificial Intelligence Applications Used in the Pandemic

It is certain that there have been dozens of pandemics in human history that caused mass deaths and destruction. Covid-19 disease has also turned into a pandemic with its rapid and intercontinental spread. According to some sources, the Covid-19 pandemic is one of the worst disasters in human history. Despite very serious precautions taken worldwide, Covid-19 continues to threaten health systems and human life. Under these conditions, humanity needs faster, cheaper, more efficient and more accurate diagnostic and treatment methods both in order to control the current pandemic and to be prepared for new pandemics. Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence technologies that are correctly designed and put into service will provide us with this support. In fact, many simultaneous vaccination studies, many applications that make life easier during the pandemic period, the use of artificial intelligence algorithms with foresight and predictive ability, have somewhat reduced the destruction of the pandemic. This study aims to evaluate the coronavirus-induced pandemics and SARS-CoV-2 virus in general in the light of current data and literature, to explain the features of artificial intelligence, and to present examples of artificial intelligence applications used in the pandemic period.

The COVID-19 pandemic: prediction study based on machine learning models.

COVID-19 was first discovered in Wuhan, China in December 2019. It is one of the worst pandemics in human history. Recent studies reported that COVID-19 is transmitted among humans by droplet infection or direct contact. COVID-19 pandemic has invaded more than 210 countries around the world and as of February 18th, 2021, just after a year has passed, a total of 110,533,973 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported and its death toll reached about 2,443,091. COVID-19 is a new member of the family of corona viruses, its nature, behaviour, transmission, spread, prevention, and treatment are to be investigated. Generally, a huge amount of data is accumulating regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, which makes hot research topics for machine learning researchers. However, the panicked world’s population is asking when the COVID-19 will be over? This study considered machine learning approaches to predict the spread of the COVID-19 in many countries. The experimental results of the proposed model showed that the overall R2 is 0.99 from the perspective of confirmed cases. A machine learning model has been developed to predict the estimation of the spread of the COVID-19 infection in many countries and the expected period after which the virus can be stopped. Globally, our results forecasted that the COVID-19 infections will greatly decline during the first week of September 2021 when it will be going to an end shortly afterward.

Design of economic PODS to safeguard against contagious diseases using computational fluid dynamics (CFD)

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, namely Covid-19, one of the greatest pandemics in human history posed some new challenges to the human beings for its prevention and control as it is an airborne respiratory disease and highly contagious. The most common practices suggested by WHO and government of India are; to wear a face mask, keep social distancing etc. It becomes much more important when the whole world is opening its economy. In such situations, there are a number of places where maintaining social distances or wearing a face mask is quite a tough job for example Laboratories and eating messes and canteens of schools and colleges. Thus, the present studies focus on the designing of economic PODS which may be helpful in controlling the spread of airborne disease in mass gathering places like in educational institutions in particular laboratories and eating messes. The present studies first emphasize on the flow field analysis of human cough by assuming it as a turbulent jet using CFD. Then, based on the physical dimensions covered by the coughing jets a further detailed study is conducted on 23 number of PODS of various shapes and sizes using CFD to select a suitable POD so that the effect of coughing in a laboratory/mess can be minimized to contain the infections. A POD with 1 m length and 30 cm height having an arc inside (POD 20) is found to be the best POD to contain the airborne infections.

Epidemics and Pandemics In Human History - A Review

Epidemics and Pandemics In Human History - A Review

A Review on Pathophysiology and Prognosis of Seizures in Covid-19

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel infectious disease. It has caused one of the most destructive pandemics in human history with symptoms ranging from mild to severe. In severe cases, patients can develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and multi-organ failure. Among the neurological manifestations, seizures have been most commonly reported. Different mechanisms have been proposed for the occurrence of seizures in COVID-19 patients. Hypoxia and severe metabolic and electrolyte derangements may theoretically lower seizure thresholds. Furthermore, cytokine storm and the involvement of ACE receptors are also being considered as possible etiologies for these seizures. We performed a detailed literature review and included 15 case reports of seizures in COVID patients. The majority of the patients had past conditions ranging from diabetes and hypertension to as severe as fahr syndrome, AF (Atrial Fibrillation), and MM (Multiple Myeloma). Most of the patients with fits had moderate to severe COVID-19. Most patients were treated with levetiracetam, a very effective anti-epileptic. For COVID-19 patients with seizures, a multidisciplinary approach should be considered to enhance the care of the patients. It is very important to do a long-term follow-up of these patients to fully understand if these patients tend to develop epilepsy.

COVID-19 Symptom-Related Google Searches and Local COVID-19 Incidence in Spain: Correlational Study.

BackgroundCOVID-19 is one of the biggest pandemics in human history, along with other disease pandemics, such as the H1N1 influenza A, bubonic plague, and smallpox pandemics. This study is a small contribution that tries to find contrasted formulas to alleviate global suffering and guarantee a more manageable future.ObjectiveIn this study, a statistical approach was proposed to study the correlation between the incidence of COVID-19 in Spain and search data provided by Google Trends.MethodsWe assessed the linear correlation between Google Trends search data and the data provided by the National Center of Epidemiology in Spain—which is dependent on the Instituto de Salud Carlos III—regarding the number of COVID-19 cases reported with a certain time lag. These data enabled the identification of anticipatory patterns.ResultsIn response to the ongoing outbreak, our results demonstrate that by using our correlation test, the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic can be predicted in Spain up to 11 days in advance.ConclusionsDuring the epidemic, Google Trends offers the possibility to preempt health care decisions in real time by tracking people's concerns through their search patterns. This can be of great help given the critical, if not dramatic need for complementary monitoring approaches that work on a population level and inform public health decisions in real time. This study of Google search patterns, which was motivated by the fears of individuals in the face of a pandemic, can be useful in anticipating the development of the pandemic.

Epidemics and pandemics in human history: Origins, effects and response measures

Epidemics and pandemics are kind of the regular disasters that not only threaten human health, but also affect economy, social and politic life of many societies and civilizations. In the timeline of human history, there have long been a lot of catastrophic epidemics, rapidly spreading all over the world, leading to massive deaths and becoming horrible challenges to human existence. They included the plague of Antonine in Ancient Rome; the Justinian pandemic and ``the Black Death'' in the Medieval period; the pandemic of cholera and the Asian plague in the modern age; the 1918- 1919 flu pandemic, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the influenza pandemic in 2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019-2020. The main infectious diseases that cause pandemics in human history are plagued, smallpox, cholera and flu. By approaching the macrohistory and environmental history, the article made some overviews of epidemics and pandemics in human history from ancient ages to modern ages. Firstly, the article researches the terms ``epidemic, pandemic" and their levels. Next, the article analyzes the origins of epidemics and pandemics, the causes of their appearance, including biological factors, natural conditions and social conditions. Then, the article presents the outbreaks, spreads and impacts of some significant epidemics and pandemics in human history. Hence, the article also initially evaluates some response measures to epidemics and pandemics in history.

A brief outline of the history of world epidemics-pandemics. Part I

Pandemics in human history led to losses of millions of people and a significant decline in economic and social life. At the end of autumn 2019, humanity once again «unexpectedly» ran into the manifestations of mass infectious defeat. But the alarming reports of doctors were not heard by society. Unfortunately, what they predicted soon became a bitter reality of our time.The article traces and partially analyzes the consequences of epidemics-pandemics that occurred in ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War, the plague of Antoninus, the plague of Justinian and the «black death» in the fourteenth century. To cope with the pandemic, cities and rulers sought out and lured doctors, paying for their services six months or even a year in advance. At that time, the saying appeared «the presence of a doctor in the city is a blessing from God!» The predecessors of modern infectious disease doctors, the «plague doctors», also appeared. For the first time, quarantine was used as an anti-epidemic protection. Its high efficiency is evidenced by the fact that 600 years later the WHO recognizes quarantine as the only possible effective way to combat the coronavirus pandemic.Dogmatic medicine, which was completely defeated in the fight against the plague, began to change in favor of the conclusions of doctors with practical knowledge, who not only tried to prevent the disease but also to cure it, and surgery received a significant impetus for its further development.After partial recovery from the plague pandemics, at the end of the 15th century in Spain and Italy, an epidemic of a «new» infection broke out unexpectedly. In a record short time, it captured residents of all other countries of Europe and Asia, regardless of age, gender and social status. In view of the result, it was first called «sexual plague», and later — more familiar to us — «syphilis». This epidemic-pandemic with certain periods of its extinction and revival continues to this day, affecting hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.At the beginning of the seventeenth century epidemics were not only in Europe but also in the colonies of the Spanish crown. With a strange pattern they arose in the 20s of almost every century. This particular year, a pandemic of a dangerous infectious disease, smallpox, broke out.That is, from antiquity to the beginning of the eighteenth century the society, with great human and economic losses, suffered several epidemics-pandemics, which not only significantly slowed down its progress, but also allowed the human community to redefine the further vector of its existence and development.

A digital reconstruction of the 1630\u20131631 large plague outbreak in Venice

The plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is widely considered to be responsible for the most devastating and deadly pandemics in human history. Starting with the infamous Black Death, plague outbreaks are estimated to have killed around 100 million people over multiple centuries, with local mortality rates as high as 60%. However, detailed pictures of the disease dynamics of these outbreaks centuries ago remain scarce, mainly due to the lack of high-quality historical data in digital form. Here, we present an analysis of the 1630–1631 plague outbreak in the city of Venice, using newly collected daily death records. We identify the presence of a two-peak pattern, for which we present two possible explanations based on computational models of disease dynamics. Systematically digitized historical records like the ones presented here promise to enrich our understanding of historical phenomena of enduring importance. This work contributes to the recently renewed interdisciplinary foray into the epidemiological and societal impact of pre-modern epidemics.

In-silico investigation of phytochemicals from Asparagus racemosus as plausible antiviral agent in COVID-19

COVID-19 has ravaged the world and is the greatest of pandemics in human history, in the absence of treatment or vaccine the mortality and morbidity rates are very high. The present investigation was undertaken to screen and identify the potent leads from the Indian Ayurvedic herb, Asparagus racemosus (Willd.) against SARS-CoV-2 using molecular docking and dynamics studies. The docking analysis was performed on the Glide module of Schrödinger suite on two different proteins from SARS-CoV-2 viz. NSP15 Endoribonuclease and spike receptor-binding domain. Asparoside-C, Asparoside-D and Asparoside -F were found to be most effective against both the proteins as confirmed through their docking score and affinity. Further, the 100 ns molecular dynamics study also confirmed the potential of these compounds from reasonably lower root mean square deviations and better stabilization of Asparoside-C and Asparoside-F in spike receptor-binding domain and NSP15 Endoribonuclease respectively. MM-GBSA based binding free energy calculations also suggest the most favourable binding affinities of Asparoside-C and Asparoside-F with binding energies of −62.61 and −55.19 Kcal/mol respectively with spike receptor-binding domain and NSP15 Endoribonuclease. Highlights Asparagus racemosus have antiviral potential Phytochemicals of Shatavari showed promising in-silico docking and MD results Asparaoside-C and Asparoside-F has good binding with target proteins Asparagus racemosus holds promise as SARS-COV-2 (S) and (N) proteins inhibitor Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

The Trans-zoonotic Virome interface: Measures to balance, control and treat epidemics

The global virome: The viruses have a global distribution, phylogenetic diversity and host specificity. They are obligate intracellular parasites with single- or double-stranded DNA or RNA genomes, and afflict bacteria, plants, animals and human population. The viral infection begins when surface proteins bind to receptor proteins on the host cell surface, followed by internalisation, replication and lysis. Further, trans-species interactions of viruses with bacteria, small eukaryotes and host are associated with various zoonotic viral diseases and disease progression. Virome interface and transmission: The cross-species transmission from their natural reservoir, usually mammalian or avian, hosts to infect human-being is a rare probability, but occurs leading to the zoonotic human viral infection. The factors like increased human settlements and encroachments, expanded travel and trade networks, altered wildlife and livestock practices, modernised and mass-farming practices, compromised ecosystems and habitat destruction, and global climate change have impact on the interactions between virome and its hosts and other species and act as drivers of trans-species viral spill-over and human transmission. Zoonotic viral diseases and epidemics: The zoonotic viruses have caused various deadly pandemics in human history. They can be further characterized as either newly emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases, caused by pathogens that historically have infected the same host species, but continue to appear in new locations or in drug-resistant forms, or reappear after apparent control or elimination. The prevalence of zoonoses underlines importance of the animal–human–ecosystem interface in disease transmission. The present COVID-19 infection has certain distinct features which suppress the host immune response and promote the disease potential. Treatment for epidemics like covid-19: It appears that certain nutraceuticals may provide relief in clinical symptoms to patients infected with encapsulated RNA viruses such as influenza and coronavirus. These nutraceuticals appear to reduce the inflammation in the lungs and help to boost type 1 interferon response to these viral infections. The human intestinal microbiota acting in tandem with the host’s defence and immune system, is vital for homeostasis and preservation of health. The integrity and balanced activity of the gut microbes is responsible for the protection from disease states including viral infections. Certain probiotics may help in improving the sensitivity and effectivity of immune system against viral infections. Currently, antiviral therapy is available only for a limited number of zoonotic viral infections. Because viruses are intracellular parasites, antiviral drugs are not able to deactivate or destroy the virus but can reduce the viral load by inhibiting replication and facilitating the host’s innate immune mechanisms to neutralize the virus. Conclusion: Lessons from recent viral epidemics - Considering that certain nutraceuticals have demonstrated antiviral effects in both clinical and animal studies, further studies are required to establish their therapeutic efficacy. The components of nutraceuticals such as luteolin, apigenin, quercetin and chlorogenic acid may be useful for developing a combo-therapy. The use of probiotics to enhance immunity and immune response against viral infections is a novel possibility. The available antiviral therapy is inefficient in deactivating or destroying the infecting viruses, may help in reducing the viral load by inhibiting replication. The novel efficient antiviral agents are being explored.