COVID-19: Epidemiology

In the history, the year 2019 will be remembered as the year that has witnessed the beginning of a pandemic, primarily affecting the respiratory tract and then, spreading from human to human. A total of 25.18 million reported cases and 0.84 million deaths, as of 30th August 2020, and still counting, were caused by a novel coronavirus named COVID-19 that originated in Wuhan, China. By the beginning of the year 2020, this virus spread to several countries like Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Between January 2020 and March 2020, the disease took a paradigm shift and started to affect the majority of European countries like Italy, Spain, France, Germany and UK. In the majority of the patients with a competent immune system, this disease goes unnoticed or without symptoms, thus making them highly susceptible to spread this disease to whoever comes in their contact. Aged patients (>60 years) or patients with chronic health issues like heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, and weak immunity are at greater risk of developing the symptoms. In severe conditions, patients need hospitalization and respiratory support (respirators/ventilators), thus causing an overload on the health system of the world. This initiated the movement of “flattening the curve” by social distancing and isolation to decrease the burden on the health system and to decrease the spread of the disease.

Keywords: China, Confirmed Cases, Cordon sanitaire, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Curfews, Epidemiology, Geographical distribution, Global Epidemiology, Hotspots, Lockdown, National Responses, Non-essential, Outbreak, Pandemic, Person-to-person Transmission, Quarantines, SARS-CoV-2, WHO Region, Wuhan.