"COrona VIrus Disease-2019” (COVID-19) is a new and potentially deadly respiratory tract disease caused by a novel RNA virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), that the mankind has been recently facing with and fighting with superhumanly. As far as we are informed by the health authorities till now, after a critical contact of the first case in humans with bats in Wuhan’s animal market in China at the end of 2019, the Pandora’s box was opened: disease, outbreak, and fear. But our hope and efforts are still in the box to defeat this invisible enemy. During the preparation of this editorial, COVID-19 has affected over 1.5 million people worldwide, and with over 90,000 deaths, in more than 210 countries globally, since its first emergence as “…a mystery viral pneumonia outbreak…” in November 2019, in Wuhan, China.1 The main properties of SARS-CoV-2 are its high virulence and relatively low fatality. Fortunately, according to the reports till now, COVID-19 has relatively lower reported fatality rate of 3.7%, compared with diseases associated with SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) which are 9.6% and 34.4%, respectively.2 The success of public health measures (isolation of cases, contact tracing, quarantine of all contacts, social distancing, community quarantine, etc.) on the management is supposed to depend on differences between SARS and COVID-19, rather than the similarities. They have been reported as follows: (1) COVID-19 has a higher transmissibility than SARS. (2) Many more patients with COVID-19 rather than SARS have mild symptoms that contribute to spread because these patients are often missed and not isolated.3 Moreover, regarding public health, a special attention should also be given to the self-protection and self-quarantine of high-risk patients with comorbidities (e.g. chronic lung diseases such as bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive lung disease, hypertension, chronic liver diseases, immunocompromised patients, oncological patients, age higher than 60, etc.) in order to prevent exposure to the virus and diminish the possible further transmission, morbidity, and mortality.
Considering its incredibly fast global spread, COVID-19 was declared firstly as “public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)” on January 30, 2020, and lastly as a “Pandemic” by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, with the words of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General: “This is not just a public crisis, it is a crisis that will touch every sector.” Although this critical situation was previously underestimated by most of the countries in the world, which were not prepared and ready in most aspects of this crisis at the beginning, tremendous increase in recognition, serious preventive and safety measures, limited social and public traffic, closed borders and even lockdowns have been observed in nearly all countries. Our regular lifestyles have nearly stopped except the continuation of vital needs, processes, communications, and limited interactions worldwide.