Outbreak of COVID-19 – an urgent need for good science to silence our fears?

摘要

In the first two decades of the 21st century, we sawcoronaviruses emerge across Asia, East and West. In 2002/3,severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infected 238 andkilled 33 in Singapore, including healthcare workers.(1) Ten yearsafter that, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus(MERS or nCoV-2012) emerged in the Middle East and continuesto appear with sporadic cases and localised outbreaks, includingone in Korea.(2) Both these coronaviruses, thought to originatefrom bats, spilled over to civet cats and camels, respectively,and have caused significant human morbidity and mortality.While other human coronaviruses (HCoV) such as HCoV-NL63,HCoV-229E, HCoV-OC43 and HKU1 typically cause mild upperrespiratory tract infections in immunocompetent patients, they canlead to pneumonia or cause exacerbations of chronic obstructivepulmonary disease or chronic heart failure, especially in olderadults or the immunocompromised.(3) Animals are also not spared:swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus (i.e. SADS-CoV)and porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (i.e. PEDV) have causedsignificant losses to the livestock industry in recent years.