Question

How has the evolution of COVID-19 impacted all human populations?

Answer 1

It is certainly a new virus for the human population. It resembles very much the SARS virus which emerged in 2003. That also was an epidemic but it was limited to a few thousand people in several places in the world with the death rate of about 10%. It also relates, but less closely, to another virus which emerged a few years later – the MERS virus. It was even more deadly, it killed one in three people who got infected.

But both of these epidemics disappeared following much less drastic measures than the ones implemented today. The present virus, COVID-19, is clearly more infectious and is mainly transmitted via aerosols (from people who cough or sneeze etc), but you can also get it through contact with objects that infected people, who are not necessarily sick, have touched.

It has spread all over the world and is present in almost all countries where they are able to test for it. This is also different from the previous epidemics because it took a long time to test for those – now we already have tests. It belongs to a family of viruses that is named “corona” – which comes from the Latin for “crown” and refers to the structure of these viruses as under the electron microscope it looks like a crown.

This family of coronaviruses has been with humans and animals for a long time and causes mild infections like the common cold, but this new virus is much more aggressive than all other members of the family. The symptoms are very similar to some extent to heavy flu but it is much more deadly; at least 5% of those who get infected and show symptoms might die. There may also be many infected people who do not get sick and that we do not test.

It is a completely different virus from the Influenza viruses that belong to a very different group, meaning that flu vaccine or flu medication will not help. For now, we have no medication or vaccine for the virus. The genetic structure of this virus and a flu virus are as different as we are from dinosaurs to extent a SARS-2 virus.

It is, however, much more infectious. The estimation now is that any person infected with this virus may infect three other people, which leads to an exponential growth of the epidemic – that was not the case with SARS. It is also clear that people without symptoms can spread the virus.