Before I embarked on my lecture on the internet, wikis and podcasts this week, I had to prepare for an online exam that involved reviewing a scientific article about the COVID-19 pandemic. This motivated me to research more about the topic and what has been written so far now that legitimate papers for reference are available. I felt I could share a few already known information about the pandemic from what I was reading.

On the 31st of December 2019, as people across the world prepared to usher into the new year/decade, the World Health Organisation was being notified of a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown source in Wuhan, China. The disease quickly spread to various provinces within China and found its way to other countries and continents. Scientists in China isolated the virus from an infected patient and identified it as a new strain of coronavirus, that was later named SARS-CoV-2.

It’s emergence after the SARs-CoV in 2002 and MERS-CoV in 2012 marks the third introduction of highly pathogenic and large scale coronavirus epidemic into the human population in the 21st century. The WHO named the disease COVID-19 and in January 2020 officially declared the COVID-19 epidemic a public health emergency and global pandemic. As of 1st of March, 87137 cases were confirmed globally with 2977 deaths and a month later on1st April, the numbers reported by WHO skyrocketed to 823,626 confirmed cases with 40,598 deaths worldwide. The pandemic comes 11 years later after the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic that lasted 16 months.

Scientists describe the SARs-CoV-2 as a single stranded enveloped virus with a set of genes encoding the virus structural and non-structural proteins that allow the virus to enter and interfere with an individual’s immune system. The SARs-CoV-2 affects the respiratory system and common symptoms reported include fever, malaise, cough, sore throat, headaches and shortness of breath. The infection has been shown to be asymptomatic in some individuals but present with mild and severe symptoms in others. The elderly and individuals with other underlying chronic illnesses are more at risk of having the infection rapidly progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome, respiratory failure and death.

The virus is thought to spread through the respiratory tract by droplets, respiratory secretions and direct contact although it was also found in feces and blood of patients with severe disease in China. The virus incubation period is 14 days and it’s contagious during this period. More about viral transmission is still being researched but in the meantime we are advised to wash hand thoroughly with soap and water, avoid large gatherings, cover mouth when coughing, when sick wear a mask and self isolate. Although currently no tests are prequalified by the WHO, the gold standard clinical diagnosis method is nucleic acid detection by molecular techniques using nasal and throat swab samples. Clearly, there is still a lot more to be discovered and like the H1N1 pandemic, this could take longer than we want it to.

Back to the lecture, I appreciate that it emphasised one important point, that is, the use of trustworthy sites for information especially during this time. I am limiting my sources of information to major health organisations, scientific journals and renowned news outlets such as the BBC. Today, fake news is occupying the internet and it only takes a single click to be captivated by them. Different platforms can be used positively to impact change and the examples in the lecture were really good. Following the workshops, I checked out the ‘Because science’ videos on youTube and I was blown away. The videos are simple, creative, hilarious and really appealing. The shots were equally simple and of great quality. These would definitely be good tips for our vodcast, although there’s not much to make fun of when talking about climate change.