Serpentes Issue 5

COVID-19 and its effects on the UK economy - Mahir Mujtaba “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2”, more commonly know as the COVID19 or coronavirus, is an infectious respiratory disease which is part of the coronavirus family.

In recent weeks, this disease has been a cause of global panic, with the world health organisation declaring a state of emergency. This has been caused due to its infection nature and also as this specific disease has never been seen before. There is currently no know vaccine to treat people infected by COVID-19. Like other coronaviruses of its kind, COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease (an infectious disease transmitted from animals to humans), and thus, this is how it is thought the virus came to affect humans.

The virus itself was first identified in December 2019 when a mysterious new illness emerged in Wuhan, China. The source of this outbreak has since been believed to be a “wet market” in the city of Wuhan (The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market). Wet markets are traditionally places that sell dead and live animals out in the open’. Due to the close proximity of live and dead animals as well as the lack of hygiene standards, as a result, the market posed an increased risk of the zoonotic disease jumping from animals to humans.

It is yet to be identified the animal which caused this outbreak, however, scientists have their suspicion that bats were the original host of COVID-19, just like SARS coronavirus.

Although bats we not actually sold at this market in Wuhan, it is thought they infected livestock with the disease, such as chickens. This is not the first case bats were recorded to have such a deadly disease, it had also been discovered they were hosts to a number of other diseases such as Ebola, HIV and rabies. Despite this, there are many different animals which are yet to be discovered to have maybe transferred the disease to humans.

Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death. Despite this, in some cases those infected may be asymptomatic, meaning that no visible symptoms are presented.

The virus itself can be transmitted in a number of ways; this includes the exchange of bodily fluids. In addition to this people can also get the disease through direct contact with an infected individual’s mucus or saliva on surfaces or in the air. According to scientists, coughs and sneezes can travel several feet and stay suspended in the air for up to 10 minutes. As a result, this is a prime way to transmit the disease. It is still unknow however, how long the virus can survive outside a host organism, this could range from a few hours to months like in other viruses. Recent data from the WHO (World Health Organisation) has revealed that the average number of people infected by an individual suffering from COVID-19 is from 1.4 to 2.5 which is very similar to that of the Ebola virus.

Since it was first discovered in 2019, there has been a huge spike in the increase of those suffering from the virus. As of March 2020, there have been 92,798 confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 3,164 people have died and 48,469 have recovered. This death toll has well surpassed that of SARS and MERS (other types of coronaviruses). Despite this it has been indicated by preliminary findings that the virus appears to be less fatal than SARS .

Although scientists have lots of new information on COVID-19, it is too early and there is also too little information to compare exactly how deadly the virus is compared to other diseases such as the flu, which in recent newspaper articles has been said to be more deadly than the ‘coronavirus’.

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