Biological Weapons Coronavirus: Weapon of Mass Destruction? by U C Jha & K Ratnabali

Author:U C Jha & K Ratnabali
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vij Books India Pvt Ltd
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter - IV

The Biological Weapons: Threat from Coronavirus

On 31 December 2019, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown origin in Wuhan, the capital of the Hubei Province. The initial evidence suggested that the outbreak was associated with a seafood market in Wuhan, which was closed on 1 January 2020. The causative agent was characterized as a betacoronavirus, later named SARS-CoV-2.1 Human-to-human transmission was confirmed on 14 January 2020, by which time SARSCoV-2 had already spread to many countries throughout the world.2 On 11 March 2020, the extensive global transmission led to WHO declaring COVID-19 as a pandemic – a public health emergency of international concern. There is no approved treatment for Covid-19 and doctors are testing a host of therapies in a desperate bid to save the lives of people who have few other options.3 In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections. Some of these are mild, such as some cases of the common cold, while others are lethal, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and COVID-19. This is the third major coronavirus outbreak over the past 20 years that has had a substantial socioeconomic impact,4 but the first in the 21st century to affect countries across all continents except Antarctica.5 At the time of authoring (30 September 2020), there have been 33.44 million confirmed cases and more than one million deaths worldwide attributed to the COVID-19 virus. The details of COVID-19 cases in some of the states are as follows.6

The United States: The first case was reported on 22 January 2020. Since then, the country has reported 7,077,015 cases, and 203,875 deaths.

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