key: cord-1015535-l97q9xov
authors: De Giorgio, Andrea
title: COVID-19 is not just a flu. Learn from Italy and act now
date: 2020-04-06
journal: Travel Med Infect Dis
DOI: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101655
sha: 8f38cc6c306c8fd29bbd2c946bfa9c55ba7f18cb
doc_id: 1015535
cord_uid: l97q9xov

nan

It is important not to underestimate the small opponents:

you can see an elephant, a little mosquito, but not a virus Dear reader, wherever you are reading, do not understimate the novel coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. You especially know the name of the disease, COVID-19, but names are not so important.

This novel coronavirus is traveling very fast and will arrive soon in your country. I do not want to thoroughgoing statistical analysis, but I want sensitize you about this novel coronavirus.

Some information about SARS-CoV-2: the average incubation period is still unclear because of significant variation among patients, ranging from around 3.6 days [1] to around 6.4 days [2] .

Symptoms of infection include fever, chills, cough, coryza, sore throat, breathing difficulty, myalgia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, [3] and older people with medical comorbidities is demonstrated having a poorer prognosis. [3] SARS-CoV-2 infection can lead to cardiac injury, respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and death; [4] infections by this virus continue to rise as do the number of deaths as confirmed by World Health Organization (WHO) that has also recently announced COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, [5] and in Italy the situation has become tragic.

The patient 1 (it was not possible to find patient 0) was discovered on 20 th February when a 38- A dramatic situation is the one in which patients die alone in hospital and their relatives are unable to visit or see them for the last time, but they will be able to see them only in a coffin. Currently, the most affected area is Bergamo (and its province) where we had to witness dramatic scenes, such as the one in which coffins were taken to the crematorium by army vehicles because hearses were no longer available: too many deaths. In these days, in Europe, especially France, Spain, United Kingdom and Germany are facing a situation of increasing infection. In particular, videos from Spain have showed patients lying in the hospital corridors, highlighting that the country has not been able to cope with the wave of infection: in just one day there were ten thousand more positive cases.

Italy has proved extraordinary in its reorganization and it is astonishing how our lesson and our sacrifice is not useful to others. On the other side of the world the situation can still be contained, but the United States, for example, seems to have acted late to contain the outbreak: 100,392 (update to 27 th March).

The situation in our country seems to highlight that we have acted too late, despite the extraordinary effort of our National healthcare service. However, in the next days we will have a real picture of the situation, but from Italy a cry is raising: this virus is not a normal influenza.

Please, do not wait any longer to take drastic measures to contain the outbreak. Do it now!

There are no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise in this paper. No external financial support has been received.

Epidemiologic characteristics of early cases with 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) disease in Republic of Korea

Unique epidemiological and clinical features of the emerging 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) implicate special control measures

Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of

China: a descriptive study

Similarity in Case Fatality Rates (CFR) of COVID-19/SARS-COV-2 in Italy and China

World Health Organization declares COVID-19 as pandemic