Guest edited by Dr Jürg Utzinger, Prof Albert Ko, Dr Robert Bergquist, Dr Florence Fouque and Dr Xiao-Nong Zhou
A thematic series published in Infectious Diseases of Poverty.
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) described the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation as a pandemic. As of 12 April 2020, 1,695,096 confirmed cases, with 105,865 deaths of COVID-19 have been reported to WHO from more than 211 countries/territories of the world. In order to mitigate threat and impact of COVID-19 on health and society, the international community has stand ready to respond to the pandemic.
Several countries have demonstrated that COVID-19 transmission can be slowed or stopped. The urgent and significant strategies may be to limit human-to-human transmission, identify and manage cases, address crucial questions regarding clinical severity and treatment options, as well as accelerate the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. This may be accomplished by improving the level of and scaling up preparedness and response operations, including strengthening readiness to rapidly identify, diagnose and treat cases; to identify and follow-up close contacts; and to raise awareness on other countermeasures. Case management should include considerations for individual quarantine, clinical treatment of confirmed symptomatic cases and home care for suspected mild infections. Accelerating priority research and innovation in candidate therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics will facilitate the multidisciplinary and collaborative response.
In order to rapidly share scientific evidence and experiences acquired in studies regarding above strategies within the international communities, Infectious Diseases of Poverty has launched this series. The themes covered include but not limited to preparedness and response strategies, case identification and management, clinical diagnosis and treatment, research and innovation in therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics as well as any subject closely related.
