Travel medicine and infectious disease
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Travel Med Infect Dis · Nov 2020
LetterMasks and medical care: Two keys to Taiwan's success in preventing COVID-19 spread.
Although Taiwan has geographic, commercial and social proximity to China, it stands as a stark example of success in response to the SARS-CoV-II pandemic.
"Despite being close to China, Taiwan has stopped the COVID-19 with general screening strategy and encouraging people in Taiwan to wear a mask. Taiwan reported the first COVID-19 case on January 21, 2020. About 850,000 and 400,000 of Taiwan's 23 million citizens live and work in mainland China, respectively."
Many factors have contributed to this success, beginning with Taiwan's memory and lessons drawn from the 2003 SARS-I pandemic.
Two notable factors are Taiwan's national health service, with it's ubiquitous and affordable access to acute medical care:
"Taiwanese people … can go to the emergency department of the nearest hospital for relevant medical examinations (including sampling and testing for COVID-19, blood tests, and X-ray imaging test) with out-of-pocket medical expenses of less than NT$ 600 (USD 20). People with high suspicion of COVID-19 infection will be admitted to isolation wards, and those who have tested positive for COVID-19 can only be discharged home after three consecutive respiratory specimens test negative for the virus. … patients will have to pay less than NT$ 3000 (USD 100) out-of-pocket for medical services."
And their management of mask access, production and subsequent widespread public use:
"The daily production capacity of face mask manufacturers in Taiwan before the outbreak was 1.88 million face masks ... Currently, Taiwan is capable of producing 20 million face masks per day and will boost its production capacity to 25 million face masks per day."
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Travel Med Infect Dis · Sep 2020
ReviewAn update on SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 with particular reference to its clinical pathology, pathogenesis, immunopathology and mitigation strategies.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), emerged in early December 2019 in China and became a pandemic situation worldwide by its rapid spread to more than 200 countries or territories. Bats are considered as the reservoir host, and the search of a probable intermediate host is still going on. The severe form of the infection is associated with death is mainly reported in older and immune-compromised patients with pre-existing disease history. ⋯ Rapid diagnostics have been developed, and significant efforts are being made to develop effective vaccines and therapeutics. In the absence of any virus-specific therapy, internationally, health care authorities are recommending the adoption of effective community mitigation measures to counter and contain this pandemic virus. This paper is an overview of this virus and the disease with a particular focus on SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 clinical pathology, pathogenesis, and immunopathology, along with recent research developments.
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Travel Med Infect Dis · May 2020
ReviewTherapeutic use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 and other viral infections: A narrative review.
The rapidly spreading Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), represents an unprecedented serious challenge to the global public health community. The extremely rapid international spread of the disease with significant morbidity and mortality made finding possible therapeutic interventions a global priority. While approved specific antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2 are still lacking, a large number of existing drugs are being explored as a possible treatment for COVID-19 infected patients. ⋯ Both CQ and HCQ demonstrated promising in vitro results, however, such data have not yet been translated into meaningful in vivo studies. While few clinical trials have suggested some beneficial effects of CQ and HCQ in COVID-19 patients, most of the reported data are still preliminary. Given the current uncertainty, it is worth being mindful of the potential risks and strictly rationalise the use of these drugs in COVID-19 patients until further high quality randomized clinical trials are available to clarify their role in the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.
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Travel Med Infect Dis · Sep 2020
LetterDetection and analysis of nucleic acid in various biological samples of COVID-19 patients.
COVID-19 (corona virus disease 2019) is a kind of acute severe pneumonia caused by 2019-nCoV (2019-nCoV) infection. Since December 2019, it has been found in Wuhan, Hubei Province, and then spread to the whole country. ⋯ At present, upper respiratory tract nasopharyngeal swabs are mostly used as nucleic acid detection samples in China, but the positive rate is low. However, there are few reports on clinical application of 2019-nCoV nucleic acid detection in other biological samples.
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Travel Med Infect Dis · Sep 2020
COVID-19 social distancing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Bold measures in the face of political, economic, social and religious challenges.
Social distancing at its various levels has been a key measure to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19. The implementation of strict measures for social distancing is challenging, including in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) due to its level of urbanization, its social and religious norms and its annual hosting of high visibility international religious mass gatherings. KSA started introducing decisive social distancing measures early before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the Kingdom. ⋯ These measures were taken in spite of their socio-economic, political and religious challenges in the interest of public and global health. The effect of these actions on the epidemic curve of the Kingdom and on the global fight against COVID-19 remains to be seen. However, given the current COVID-19 situation, further bold and probably unpopular measures are likely to be introduced in the future.