COVID-19 COMPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTED MEASURES: MODERN TOOLS FOR INTERVENING PANDEMIC

ABSTRACT

Viral diseases are the most devastating health concern worldwide. Outbreaks of coronavirus (CoVs)-related acute respiratory diseases are responsible for the massive health/socio-economic breakdown in the last two decades including the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the third reported spillover SARS-CoV-2 from an animal coronavirus to humans. After the H1N1 pandemic influenza (2009), SARS-CoV-2 (novel-beta coronavirus) causing COVID-19 has stretched across 215 countries in 5 major continents with 200,523,190 confirmed cases (4 August 2021;https//www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/). COVID-19 patients had cough, fever, dyspnea, headache, and respiratory failure, as well as shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and sepsis in severe instances. Independent of two preceding epidemics, SARS (2002) and MERS (2012), a knowledge gap about the emerging medical manifestations as well as complications of SARS-CoV-2 (2019-2020) infections in humans must be filled, with a focus on immunological complications and computational genomics for forecasting/preparedness for a similar outbreak in the future. This paper aims to address aspects of this gap.