RESUMEN
The rampant and sudden outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus also called COVID-19 and its uncontrollable spread have led to a global crisis. COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease and the only way to fight with it is to follow social distancing and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs). Moreover, this virus is increasing exponentially day-by-day and a huge amount of data from this disease is also generated at the fast pace. So, there is a need to store, manage, and analyze this huge amount of data efficiently to get meaningful insights from it, which further helps medical professionals to tackle this global pandemic situation. Moreover, this data is to be passed through an open channel, i.e., the Internet, which opens the doors for the intruders to perform some malicious activities. Blockchain (BC) emerges as a technology that can manage the data in an efficient, transparent manner and also preserve the privacy of all the stakeholders. It can also aid in transaction authorization and verification in the supply chain or payments. Motivated by these facts, in this paper, we present a comprehensive review on the adoption of BC to tackle COVID-19 situations. We also present a case study on BC-based digital vaccine passports and analyzed its complexity. Finally, we analyzed the research challenges and future directions in this emerging area.
RESUMEN
Obesity and diabetes are established comorbidities for COVID-19. Adipose tissue demonstrates high expression of ACE2 which SARS- CoV-2 exploits to enter host cells. This makes adipose tissue a reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 viruses and thus increases the integral viral load. Acute viral infection results in ACE2 downregulation. This relative deficiency can lead to disturbances in other systems controlled by ACE2, including the renin-angiotensin system. This will be further increased in the case of pre-conditions with already compromised functioning of these systems, such as in patients with obesity and diabetes. Here, we propose that interactions of virally-induced ACE2 deficiency with obesity and/or diabetes leads to a synergistic further impairment of endothelial and gut barrier function. The appearance of bacteria and/or their products in the lungs of obese and diabetic patients promotes interactions between viral and bacterial pathogens, resulting in a more severe lung injury in COVID-19.