Retrospective View of Covid-19's Last Year Results

ABSTRACT

Coronavirus disease is an infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 that mainly targets the respiratory system, with patients exhibiting mild to severe, fatal symptoms. With more than 526 million cases and over 6 million deaths worldwide, Coronavirus managed to affect everyone, irrespective of age or gender, presenting itself with a variety of symptoms that spared no body system and made the diagnosing process difficult. This study aims to highlight the situation of Covid-19 cases in Constanta, Romania, throughout the given time. During June 1, 2021-May 31, 2022, Saint Andrew's County Emergency Clinical Hospital's Molecular Biology Laboratory performed 24030 Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction tests. The process consists in two steps: Extraction and amplification. The viral ribonucleic acid is extracted out of the patient's respiratory specimen and converted in deoxyribonucleic acid for the second step. The amplification consists in multiplying the deoxyribonucleic acid in many copies in order for the laboratory doctor to detect, confirm the virus existence and study the viral genome in detail. The tests were conducted on both genders and all ages. Statistics showed that 53% of the patients were males, the oldest patient being a 104 years old male and as for the youngest, it was a 1-day old boy. Results concluded that 14% of the tests were positive and almost 86% negative. Less than 1% of the tests came out equivocal or inconclusive and needed to be repeated. Copyright © 2022 Rusescu Alina et al., published by Sciendo.