Journal of Current Viruses and Treatment Methodologies

Journal of Current Viruses and Treatment Methodologies

Journal of Current Viruses and Treatment Methodologies

Current Issue Volume No: 1 Issue No: 2

Letter Open Access Available online freely Peer Reviewed Citation

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Emerging and Future Challenges in Toxicology Practice

1Associate Professors of Forensic Medicine &Clinical Toxicology, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Egypt

Author Contributions
Received 11 Apr 2020; Accepted 20 Apr 2020; Published 27 Apr 2020;

Academic Editor: Deepak Kumar Semwal, Department of Phytochemistry, Faculty of Biomedical Sciences

Checked for plagiarism: Yes

Review by: Single-blind

Copyright ©  2020 Shimaa M Motawei

License
Creative Commons License     This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Competing interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation:

Shimaa M. Motawei (2020) Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Emerging and Future Challenges in Toxicology Practice. Journal of Current Viruses and Treatment Methodologies - 1(2):3-5. https://doi.org/10.14302/issn.2691-8862.jvat-20-3314

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DOI 10.14302/issn.2691-8862.jvat-20-3314

Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), originating in the late December 2019, in the city of Wuhan in China, has become a major public health challenge for all countries all over the world1.

The World Health Organization announced Corona virus as a pandemic on Wednesday March 11, 2020, with the number of cases and affected countries climbing higher over hours and days. The rapidly-spread virus recorded by April 18, 2020, 210 countries affected, with a total of 2160207 laboratory-confirmed cases and 146088 deaths. Hence, the latest fatality rate is 67.6% The virus is continuing to spread dramatically over hours and days. The risk assessment of the virus is very high globally, as classified by the WHO1.

According to the latest WHO information on age and sex affection, the sex ratio (male to female) among the confirmed cases is 1.03:1, and the median age is 51 (interquartile range, IQR: 36-65) years. There are variations of age and sex ratios significantly in different affected countries1.

Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the epidemic situation. In Toxicology practice, the risk of cross infection can be high among patients and practitioners. Strict and effective infection control protocols are urgently needed. Here are five essential principles about COVID-19 in Clinical Toxicology practice2.

As the emergence of COVID-19 demonstrated the shortage of most health systems nearly all over the world, five principles will be mandatory for Clinical Toxicology practice in the era of COVID-19 pandemic.

Susceptibility

Drug abusers, chronic diseases like heart failure on chronic digitalis therapy with susceptibility to cumulative effects, other debilitating diseases, cancer, patients on immunosuppressive therapy and immunosuppressant poisons like cases of chronic Lead (Pb) poisoning3.

Transmission

Changed from air-born to droplet infection, which means more precaution about the distance with a suspected person. Infected persons during the incubation period (4-14 days), asymptomatic infected subjects and carriers constitute the main challenge, as it is difficult to identify and quarantine these subjects in time, and they remain a risk to spread their infection in their communities4.

In addition, it remains to be proved whether patients in the recovering phase are a potential source of transmission5.

Fatality Rate

According to current data, the fatality rate (cumulative deaths divided by cumulative cases) of COVID-19 is rising to be 5.87%, which is still lower than that of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome; ≈10%) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome; ≈34%6 and higher than that of seasonal influenza (0.01% to 0.17%) according to data for 2010 to 2017 from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention7.

People of all ages are generally susceptible to this new infectious disease. However, those who are in close contact with patients with symptomatic or asymptomatic COVID-19 infection, including health care workers and other patients in the hospital, are more susceptible to infection8.

The diagnosis of the infection is confirmed by RT-PCR of nasal, pharyngeal, throat swab, blood or sputum culture. It should be mentioned that a single negative RT-PCR test result from suspected patients does not exclude infection. Clinically, we should be alert of patients with an epidemiologic history, COVID-19–related symptoms, and/or positive CT 1.

Precautions

Standard precautions are to be taken and additional precautions when there is a case with a confirmed infection9.

Standard precautions include: Hand hygiene, use of personal protective equipment (e.g., gloves, masks, eyewear, face shield, overheads and gowns), respiratory hygiene/ cough etiquette, sharps safety (needles and work tools), aseptic injection practices, sterile instruments and devices, clean and disinfected environmental surfaces.

Additional precautions are used immediately when a person shows suspected symptoms of infection. Waiting until laboratory confirmation may result in contamination of the environment or other people with the infectious agent. Additional precautions include: Use of barriers (e.g. closed room doors), use of personal protective equipment, control of the environment (e.g. negative pressure ventilation, restriction of visitors), dedicated equipment (e.g. N95 Respirators), and extra-cleaning procedures.

Notification

To the national health authority, that will notify the WHO10.

Treatment

Should be done according to the most recent guidelines. Follow up of the WHO updates every few hours. The virus characteristics are not fully known and it may show mutations. Incorporating telemedicine as part of the COVID-19 outbreak response system is a wise choice1.

COVID-19 infection to an intoxicated patient may increase the need to mechanical ventilation, caused by many poisons, e.g. CO, botulism, TCA, opiates, barbiturates, salicylates, OPP,… etc.11.

COVID-19 is an emerging, rapidly evolving situation. Medical practitioners should keep getting the latest information from CDC: https:// www.coronavirus.gov, and the latest research from NIH: https://www.nih.gov/coronavirus 12.

Abbreviations

CO; Carbon monoxide,

COVID-19; Coronavirus disease 2019, CT; Computed Tomography

RT-PCR; Real-time polymerase chain reaction, TCA; Tricyclic antidepressants

OPP; Organophosphate poisoning, WHO; World Health Organization.

References

  1. 1. (2020) World Health Organization.
  1. 2. (2020) Wang Y,Wang Y,Chen Y,Qin Q.Unique epidemiological and clinical features of the emerging 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) implicate special control measures. doi: 10.1002/jmv.25748. [Epub ahead of print] , J MedVirol.Mar 5.
  1. 3.Peyton Myers L.Clinical Immunotoxicology. 2018.Methods Mol. , Biol 1803, 15-26.
  1. 4.Chan J F, Yuan S, Kok K H, To K K, Chu H et al. (2020) A familial cluster of pneumonia associated with the 2019novel coronavirus indicating person-to-person transmission: a study of afamily cluster. , Lancet 395(10223), 514-523.
  1. 5.Rothe C, Schunk M, Sothmann P, Bretzel G, Froeschl G et al. (2020) Transmission of 2019-nCoVinfection from an asymptomatic contact in. , Germany N Engl J Med 382, 970-971.
  1. 6.Malik Y S, Sircar S, Bhat S, Sharun K, Dhama K et al. (2020) Emerging novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)-currentscenario, evolutionary perspective based on genome analysis and recentdevelopments. Vet Q. 40(1), 68-76.
  1. 7.. CDC (2020):https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/whats-new-all.html
  1. 8.Rothan H A, Byrareddy S N.The epidemiology and pathogenesis of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. 2020.J Autoimmun.Feb 26: 102433. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaut.2020.102433. [Epub ahead of print] .
  1. 9.Gudi S K, Tiwari K K.Preparedness and Lessons Learned from the Novel Coronavirus Disease. , 2020.Int J Occup Environ 11(2), 108-112.
  1. 10.Zhang H. (2020) Early lessons from the frontline of the 2019-nCoV outbreak. , Lancet 395(10225), 687-10.
  1. 11.Parish S, Carter A, Liu Y H, Humble I, Trott N et al. (2019) The impact of the introduction of a toxicology service on the intensive care unit. , ClinToxicol (Phila) 57(9), 778-783.
  1. 12.. 20200418-89.

Cited by (1)

  1. 1.Motawei Shimaa M., Shabka Osama A., Liu Huimei, 2022, Poisoning during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown: retrospective analysis of exposures reported to the Poison Unit of the Mansoura Emergency Hospital, Toxicology Communications, 6(1), 66, 10.1080/24734306.2022.2075182