key: cord-306465-7kevsl1z
authors: Agarwal, Krishna Mohan; Mohapatra, Swati; Sharma, Prairit; Sharma, Shreya; Bhatia, Dinesh; Mishra, Animesh
title: Study and Overview of the Novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19)
date: 2020-09-06
journal: nan
DOI: 10.1016/j.sintl.2020.100037
sha: 
doc_id: 306465
cord_uid: 7kevsl1z

In December 2019, a new disease with pneumonia-like symptoms was spreading throughout Wuhan in China which was entitled as novel coronavirus disease or COVID -19 caused by the virus SARS CoV-2. Within a span of a few days, this disease became a global threat and was termed as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11th March 2020, since then the disease has affected more than 1.5 crore people worldwide and around 6.9 lakh people in India as of 5th July 2020. The origin of the COVID-19 disease has been traced back to the bats, but the intermediary contact is unknown. The disease spreads by respiratory droplets and contaminated surfaces. In most cases, the virus shows mild symptoms like fever, fatigue, dyspnea, cough, etc. which may become severe if appropriate precautions are not adhered to. For people with comorbidities (usually elderly) the disease may turn deadly and cause pneumonia, Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome (ARDS), and multi-organ failure, thereby affecting a person's ability to breathe leading to being put on the ventilator support. The reproduction number (Rℴ) of COVID-19 is much higher than its predecessors and genetically similar diseases like SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. This paper discusses the epidemiological characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, its phylogenetic relationship with the previous pandemic causing viruses such as SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV and analyzes the various responses to this global pandemic worldwide, focusing on the actions taken by India and their outcomes.

The current global pandemic is caused by the "novel coronavirus disease (2019-nCoV) or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) popularly known as COVID- 19 Hunan seafood market was sealed, on 7 th January roughly a week after China's notification of a possible outbreak the disease was confirmed to be the novel coronavirus disease or COVID-19 which has more than 95% homology with bat coronavirus and almost 70% similarity to the SARS CoV-1

virus. (Singhal, 2020) Environmental samples collected from the Hunan seafood market were tested positive with traces of COVID-19, indicating it as the origin of the virus (Singhal, 2020) . In the ensuing days, more cases From the above data, we can infer that the ∘ of COVID-19 is much higher than that of SARS or MERS, hence the total number of cases is also exponentially higher than those of other similar viruses. On the other hand, SARS and MERS are much deadlier than COVID-19 with their fatality rates at 9.5% and 35%, respectively. A greater number of people succumbed to the virus with the ratio of those infected.

Other than the varying ∘ and fatality rate the three viruses are quite similar in their mode of transmission and general effect on the health of an individual suffering from these diseases. All three diseases had bats as their primary reservoir and were crossed with humans via an intermediary host (which is not yet confirmed in the case of COVID-19). The disease is transmitted by human to human contact, generally through respiratory droplets. The viruses cause ARDS (Acute Respiratory

Disease Syndrome) in their worst cases forcing the patient to be put on ventilators to aid in their breathing.

According to a research which tested the viruses viability in different mediums and surfaces such as aerosol, stainless steel, copper, and cardboard providing essential information that these surfaces can be easily disinfected within a minute using certain chemicals like sodium hypochlorite, 70 to 90% 

An infected COVID-19 patient can have two major states of infection, the asymptomatic state, and the symptomatic state. The symptomatic stage can develop into Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome (ARDS) then raising infection can lead to multi-organ failure which can be fatal to the patient. An asymptomatic patient does not exhibit any symptoms of the disease due to high immunity but is still capable of infecting others, this state is extremely dangerous for the community and (5%) exhibit critical severity of illness, from this study it was also found that the case fatality rate stood at 2-3% and most deaths(49%) occurred in patients with critical illness severity.

Amongst the most affected by SARS-CoV-2 are the people with underlying medical conditions like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, respiratory diseases, hypertension, and cancer. Age is another strong risk factor for severe illness, complications, and death. The graph below depicts that the older an individual is, the higher is the case fatality rate (CFR), The ( J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 

At the time of writing this paper, neither vaccine nor approved drug treatment for COVID-19 is discovered, prevention of the disease is therefore crucial to avoid the transmission. Although certain aspects of the virus pose serious hindrances in prevention aspects, such as no onset of symptoms until an average of 5 days during the 14 days incubation period or in some cases no symptoms, while at the same time the patient is shedding viral load similar to the symptomatic patient and prolonged duration of the illness and transmission even after clinical recovery. Keeping these aspects in mind there some guidelines suggested by major institutes in a bid to prevent the spread of the virus.

At the community, level to slow the spread initially avoid large gatherings, defer non-essential travel for work or recreation, it is recommended to wear masks whenever heading out of the house for essential work the mask need not be surgical like N95 a simple mask made of cloth would suffice. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 1. To Flatten the curve so as not to overwhelm the Healthcare infrastructure:

Flatten the curve is a statement used during healthcare emergencies, its basic concept is to limit the spread of the virus such that at any given time during a pandemic the total number of patients required to be hospitalized is less than the maximum capacity of the state's health infrastructure.

When compared to other countries India's doubling rate is a lot less due to early implementation of the lockdown which has helped in bringing down the doubling rate from an initial of five days to nearly thirteen days. Currently, the rate of growth of confirmed cases is at 3.54% (Sinha, 2020) 

Use this lockdown to boost the healthcare system's capacity.

The lockdown period acts as a pause button on cases requiring urgent medical attention this period can be used to ramp up the infrastructure of hospitals so that when the lockdown is lifted and cases rise medical attention could be given to every serious case thus aiding in preventing potential deaths. the UK published its first advisory for their citizens asking people with cough and fever to selfisolate for 7 days. Schools were asked to cancel trips abroad and people above the age of 70 were advised to avoid cruises (Coronavirus: People with fever or 'continuous' cough told to self-isolate, 2020). With no respite in-site, the UK again updated its advisory on 16 th March which recommended citizens to avoid non-essential travel and contact with others. Citizens were also recommended to avoid Pubs, Clubs, and theatres and try to work from home as much as possible. (Coronavirus: PM says everyone should avoid office, pubs and travel, 2020) On 23 rd March Restrictions were placed on citizens with 3 weeks of lockdown. All non-essential activities were suspended, only essential workrelated travel was allowed everyone was advised to stay at home unless there was an emergency. Approximately after a month, Sweden had 1,040 cases and three deaths due to the virus. From recorded data, it is revealed that the confirmed cases took 7-9 days to double initially. As the days progressed the doubling rate increased to 15 days and then a month, this indicated that Sweden was J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Sweden's massive investment in its health architecture over the past years has made the system one of the finest, and it has returned the reward in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, a high number of old-age deaths have become a big concern. On 24th June, the most recorded deaths in Sweden lied in the 80-90 years age group at 2157, which was followed by 1331 deaths in the 90 years and above age group and 1141 deaths in the 70-79 years age group (Jha, 2020) . This illustrates the fact that the elderly had to bear the brunt of the disease. Although Sweden was able to slow the spread of the virus, it still had a very high case fatality ratio, particularly among the elderly. A high number of people who got infected died due to the disease as compared to other countries.

On 20 th January, 2020 the very first case of COVID-19 was recorded in the USA (Corley, 2020) . In the case of COVID-19, there is currently no vaccine and the best way for us to come out of this pandemic with minimal human casualties is aggressive social distancing and lockdowns. At the same time relaxation in lockdowns enhances the rate of cases and deaths as we saw after June 1 st in India when relaxations were implemented, daily confirmed cases rose significantly. The current review highlights that even though India's lockdown strategy has been able to flatten the curve to a certain extent, it has essentially been unable to create a reversion in this trend or in isolating the disease.

Therefore, substantial reforms in policies need to be implemented to seize the spread of COVID-19.

This pandemic has resulted in the loss of a lot of lives, clearly indicating the lack of planning and understanding of various biological species that remain a threat to our civilization. Extensive research is still of paramount importance to develop the vaccine and ensure the process of interaction. Every State should be prepared beforehand to avoid such a significant rise in preventable deaths by assessing and studying about the COVID-19 pandemic carefully. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 

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Cell The Authors report no conflict of interest for submitting paper titled "Study and Overview of the Novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19

Krishna Mohan Agarwal has done his B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from KNIT

Energy from IIT

He is working as the capacity of Assistant Professor Grade III in Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida, India since

His broad Research area lies in the field of Materials & Design (Microstructure and Mechanical Behavior of materials

Alternative Fuels for IC engines, Solar Energy) and Business & Management (Management Concepts and Human Resource Management)

USA where he was leading a multidisciplinary team of researchers. He is also the recipient of "INAE fellowship award" in 2011 by Indian National Academy of Engineering. He was selected as one of the twelve young Biomedical scientists by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Govt. of India to pursue research fellowship (2014-15) in the field of sensory prosthetics at University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He has attended Biomechanics and Human Gait training at Munich, Germany in March 2017 and training of use of rTMS, EEG and EMG equipment(s) in disabled children in Ivanovo

She completed her Major Project on the topic Heavy Metals Status of Water and Soil of Okhla Bird Sanctuary and Najafgarh Jheel under the guidance of Assistant Professor Dr.Pamposh Bhat at the Department of Environment Management

A nature enthusiast with a green thumb her research interests lie in the field of Microbial Molecular Biotechnology and its application in the field of Environmental Biotechnology, Medical Biotechnology, she is also very enthusiastic about the growing importance of Bioinformatics and its application in biological data analysis

His recent internship on the topic "Design of Physical Structure of ICU Ventilators for COVID-19" with INXEE Systems Pvt. Ltd. led him to research more about COVID-19 when he felt the lack of a compiled holistic guide to the Novel Coronavirus disease. Prairit during his engineering has researched on topics like "Aerodynamics of Formula One cars" (2018) and completed projects like "Prototype Construction of an Arduino Controlled CNC Machine

Swati Mohapatra obtained her master's degree in Applied Microbiology from Kalinga Institute Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar and Ph.D. on the topic "Bio-prospecting and characterization of polyhydroxyalkanoates from Bacillus sp. isolated from rhizospheric soil" from Odisha University of Agriculture & Technology Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India in 2012 and 2016 respectively. She is currently working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbial

Her research work pertains to biopolymer & composite materials with its biomedical & agricultural applications

She supervised 06 P.G and 01 ongoing Ph.D. students. She has published 32 scientific publications including research, review & popular science articles in different journals of national & international repute and book chapters in different books

with teaching and research experience of more than 23 years. He was the recipient of the Indian Society of Cardiology Fellowship (2011), and many other fellowships