While SARS-CoV2 has been previously reported to exist in lung tissue in a 78-year-old patient who died of unexpected cardiac arrest when ready for discharge after COVID-19 hospitalisation, recently the first evidence of SARS-CoV2 infection in heart muscle cells has been reported in a case from Brazil and which is supported by evidence from other reports.
The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2/2019-nCoV) in late 2019 has led to a global pandemic.
Dr Siddharth analysed the clinical characteristics of 1,689 #COVID19 patients from 21 publications, and the demographics of 2,198 2019nCoV patients.
Watching the daily increase in Covid-19 cases in Hong Kong is scary. However, a more useful analysis is the ‘epidemic curve’, which looks at the date of symptom onset of cases rather than the date of case detection.
Dr Siddharth Sridhar, Specialist in Clinical Microbiology & Infection, looked at the main settings of Covid-19 transmission in Hong Kong (as of 20/2/2020)
Dr Siddharth Sridhar provides a brief overview on the infections with 2019-nCoV in Hong Kong as of Feb 6, 2020. Are they imported cases, local transmissions? And if locally transmitted how closely are the patients related?
Dr Siddharth Sridhar describes the basic reproduction number – a measure of how ‘infectious’ a pathogen is and how likely it is to spread through a community – for 2019-nCoV, and compares this with the early phases of the SARS and measles outbreaks.
Dr Siddharth Sridhar, looked at how stable coronaviruses are on a variety of environmental surfaces, and provides recommendations to prevent infection with 2019-nCoV.
Here, I examined the data of 28 patients from 5 publications who had severe pneumonia due to 2019-nCoV requiring ICU admission and/or resulting in death.