key: cord-0720822-cqesmvk9
authors: Meo, Sultan Ayoub; Al-Khlaiwi, Thamir; Usmani, Adnan Mahmood; Meo, Anusha Sultan; Klonoff, David C.; Hoang, Thanh D.
title: Biological and Epidemiological Trends in the Prevalence and Mortality due to Outbreaks of Novel Coronavirus COVID-19
date: 2020-04-09
journal: J King Saud Univ Sci
DOI: 10.1016/j.jksus.2020.04.004
sha: 69e44f167632170c36429e5f7d76bedac831ee9e
doc_id: 720822
cord_uid: cqesmvk9

The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) infection outbreak has posed a major threat to international health system and economy. This study is aimed at investigating the biological and epidemiological trends in the prevalence and mortality due to outbreaks of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections. The data on the global outbreak of COVID-19, were obtained from World Health Organization (WHO), Worldometer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and research institutes. The information was also recorded from research documents published in global scientific journals indexed in Pub Med and Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science on the trends in the prevalence and mortality due to COVID-19 infection outbreaks. The results show rising trends in the transmission, prevalence and mortality rate due to coronavirus COVID-19. During the period of December 29, 2019 through March 31, 2020, it has infected 750890 people worldwide, resulting in 36405 deaths with a mortality rate of 4.84%. The infections were more frequent among male gender with above 60 years of age. The mean growth rate index for total number of cases from January 23 to March 31, 2020 was 1.20 and growth rate index for mortality rate was 1.12. There was a positive association between the prevalence and mortality rate (R(2)=0.996). The novel coronavirus COVID-19 is highly contagious and has affected a large number of people worldwide. It is still spreading with mutable prevalence and mortality outbreak trends. The global health officials have taken priority measures to prevent the further outbreaks of this emerging pathogen across the globe. However, the rising number of cases and mortality risk estimates are demonstrating that enhanced public health mediations, good hygienic conditions, social distancing and movement limitations may control the COVID-19 epidemics.

Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science on the trends in the prevalence and mortality due to infection outbreaks. The results show rising trends in the transmission, prevalence and mortality rate due to coronavirus COVID-19. During the period of December 29, 2019 through March 31, 2020, it has infected 750890 people worldwide, resulting in 36405 deaths with a mortality rate of 4.84%. The infections were more frequent among male gender with above 60 years of age. The mean growth rate index for total number of cases from January 23 to March 31, 2020 was 1.20 and growth rate index for mortality rate was 1.12.

There was a positive association between the prevalence and mortality rate (R 2 =0.996). The novel coronavirus COVID-19 is highly contagious and has affected a large number of people worldwide. It is still spreading with mutable prevalence and mortality outbreak trends. The global health officials have taken priority measures to prevent the further outbreaks of this emerging pathogen across the globe. However, the rising number of cases and mortality risk estimates are demonstrating that enhanced public health mediations, good hygienic conditions, social distancing and movement limitations may control the COVID-19 epidemics.

Key Words: Biological trends, Coronavirus, Covid-2019, 2019-nCoV, Prevalence, Outbreak.

Viral infections are the most frequent infectious diseases and are common triggers for constituting major health and socio-economic harms (Meo et al., 2020) . In late December 2019, an earlier named novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), currently named as coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged from Wuhan, China, resulted in a challenging outbreaks in many regions in China and expanding globally. Human infections with coronavirus COVID-19 have raised great public health apprehension globally. In the third millennium, three major threatening infectious diseases outbreaks happened. Following the outbreak of SARS-CoV in 2002 (Zhong et al., 2003) and the MERS-CoV in 2012 , the novel Coronavirus "COVID-19" has emerged globally and has threatened the entire world. The coronaviruses are zoonotic infections, can be transmitted from animal to animal, animal to human, and human to human (Li et al., 2020; World Health Organization 2020) .

The Covid-2019 first appeared in the last week of December 2019. The infection cases were originated from bats, snakes, seafood among people living in or visiting Wuhan, China and human-to-human transmission has also been confirmed (World Health Organization, 2020; Wang et al., 2020; Callaway and Cyranoski, 2020) . The biological and epidemiological trends in the prevalence and mortality rate are changing daily.

Initially, China bears the large burden of the diseases, whereas the incidence is gradually increasing in other countries mainly the Europe and United States of America. Despite recent efforts to understand the novel Coronavirus COVID-19, the science community, researchers and general population would like more information about the current biological and epidemiological situations. This study aimed at investigating the mutable biological and epidemiological trends in the prevalence and mortality outbreaks of coronavirus COVID-19 infections.

This study was conducted in the Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We obtained data on biological and epidemiological trends, global number of confirmed cases, and number of deaths due to Coronavirus COVID-19 infections all around the world. The data were obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and reports from various countries and their allied ministries to the WHO. We also obtained data from search engines including (Worldometer-Coronavirus). Moreover, we also reviewed the literature published in the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Knowledge, Thomson Reuters, Pub-Med, Medline, and appropriate findings were recorded. We assessed the growth factor, a factor by which quantity multiplies itself over time; daily cases divided by cases on the previous day. A growth factor more than 1.0, indicates an increasing pattern, whereas values between 0-1.0 show a decline pattern (Worldometer-Coronavirus).

In this study the information on the biological and epidemiological trends on global prevalence and mortality due to novel Coronavirus Covid-2019 infections was obtained from the World Health Organization, Worldometer-Coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and reports from various countries and their allied ministries to the WHO; hence ethical approval was not required.

The data were recorded and analyzed, and the results were expressed in numbers and percentages. The regression analysis was performed; and a p-value <0.05 was considered significant.

These results are established from the available information at the time of publication originating from the mentioned sources. The data were interpreted with carefulness however, the outbreak is evolving rapidly and there is swift change in the numbers. The global number of cases and number of deaths due to novel coronavirus COVID-19 infection are presented in Table I (Table 1 ). In these contents COVID-19 highly effected the various countries including United States of America, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Iran ( Figure 1) . However, the highest mortality rate was found in Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, France and Iran ( Figure 5 ). The outbreak of novel coronavirus Covid-2019 started on December 29, 2019. The results shows rising trends in the transmission, prevalence and mortality rate due to coronavirus Covid-2019.

In this study, we also analyzed the daily cases and death growth factors of the coronavirus Covid-2019. It was identified that during the January 22 to March 31, 2020 the growth factor of the number of cases worldwide was 0.28 to 6.96 (Mean 1.20) and the growth factor of death rates was 0.51 to 2.17 (Mean 1.12).

There was a positive association between the prevalence and mortality rate (R 2 =0.996). It showed a mutable change in both the daily case growth factor and mortality rate (Figure 3 ).

Coronavirus infection is an emerging global health concern and has infected a significant portion of the world's population. In this study, we investigated the biological and epidemiological trends in the prevalence and mortality due to outbreaks of novel coronavirus COVID-19 infection. The COVID-19 infection is expanding over 198 countries and territories, infected 750890 people, has caused 36405 (4.84%) deaths during the period December 29, 2019 to March 31, 2020 (Table I) .

The coronavirus Covid-2019 infection is rapidly transmitted, the disease is still in its spreading phase with predictions of infection expand to over one people globally. We have derived the estimates of the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic and found that still the mean growth factor for number of cases and mortality rate is more than 1.0. It is highly contagious because of its biological characteristics (Meo et al., 2020) . It is a zoonotic disease with person-to-person transmission through droplet or contact transmission (Wu et al., 2019) . Infected people can transmit the disease before they present clinical symptoms (Rothe et al., 2020) . This is the main reason that the disease could swiftly spread from Wuhan, China to various corners of the globe. More recently, the epicenter of the diseases appears to have shifted from Wuhan, China to the European world and mainly Italy, and United States of America (World Health Organization, 2020). Many countries including China, Italy, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, France have cancelled international flights and implemented the world's largest and most restrictive quarantines policies to minimize the further transmission and disease burden. For the prevention of the spread of the disease, these countries are not permitting people to enter or leave the country without strict screening of the passenger for Covid-2019 infection at airports. (Quilty et al., (2020) evaluated the usefulness of thermal passenger screening for COVID-19 infection at airports exit and entry points. The authors found that effectiveness of entry screening was dependent on the effectiveness of the exit screening at the destination. The authors identified that 46% of the infected travelers were not detected, because of the incubation period, and asymptomatic or subclinical cases (Chan et al., 2020) . (Quilty et al., 2020) also reported that airport screening is unlikely to detect a sufficient proportion of COVID-19 infected travelers. The screening is intended to be a barrier for preventing infected people from entering into the country; however, evidence of its effectiveness remains limited. These are reasons that health officials are still unable to control the spread of this contagious disease. The transmission of the disease is closely linked to the asymptomatic and infected people and those visiting the countries with COVID-19 pandemic. (Figure 4) . The disease is still spreading with mutable prevalence and mortality outbreak trends.

The epidemiological trends show that novel coronavirus COVID-19 is highly contagious and has affected 750890 people, with a mortality rate of 4.84%. The number of cases were proportional to the number of deaths. There was a great fluctuation in the biological and epidemiological trends both in the growth factor of number of cases and the mortality rates. Global health officials have taken high priority measures to prevent the further outbreaks of this emerging pathogen across the globe, but still the coronavirus COVID-19 is swiftly spreading with mutable biological trends. The rising number of cases and mortality risk estimates are demonstrating the dire need for enhanced public health mediations, good hygienic conditions, social distancing and movement limitations to control the COVID-19 epidemics.

Researchers Supporting Project Number (RSP-2019/47), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. 

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World Health Organization: coronavirus

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The Honorable Editor Journal of King Saud University-Science Sub: Biological and Epidemiological Trends in the Prevalence and Mortality due to Outbreaks of Novel Coronavirus

I state that the manuscript has been submitted solely to Journal of King Saud University-Science and that it has not been previously published, either in whole or in part, nor have the findings been posted online. I also take responsibility to all aspects of the research and writing process, and take final responsibility for the paper. We declare no conflicts of interests. Thank you and best regards