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Volume 2 Issue 1 - Special Issue on Prevention and Control of COVID-19

Issue of Medical Review

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Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available March 25, 2022

Editorial

Open Access February 25, 2022

Cold-chain transmission, asymptomatic infection, mass screening, vaccine, and modelling: what we know so far for coronavirus disease 2019 control and experience in China

Wenjing Gao, Liming Li

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Reviews

Open Access March 1, 2022

Evolutionary dynamics of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 genomes

Zhaohui Qian, Pei Li, Xiaolu Tang, Jian Lu

Page range: 3-22

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Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused immense losses in human lives and the global economy and posed significant challenges for global public health. As severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19, has evolved, thousands of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) have been identified across the viral genome. The roles of individual SNVs in the zoonotic origin, evolution, and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 have become the focus of many studies. This review summarizes recent comparative genomic analyses of SARS-CoV-2 and related coronaviruses (SC2r-CoVs) found in non-human animals, including delineation of SARS-CoV-2 lineages based on characteristic SNVs. We also discuss the current understanding of receptor-binding domain (RBD) evolution and characteristic mutations in variants of concern (VOCs) of SARS-CoV-2, as well as possible co-evolution between RBD and its receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). We propose that the interplay between SARS-CoV-2 and host RNA editing mechanisms might have partially resulted in the bias in nucleotide changes during SARS-CoV-2 evolution. Finally, we outline some current challenges, including difficulty in deciphering the complicated relationship between viral pathogenicity and infectivity of different variants, and monitoring transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between humans and animals as the pandemic progresses.

Open Access March 2, 2022

A review on COVID-19 transmission, epidemiological features, prevention and vaccination

Yuqin Zhang, Gonghua Wu, Shirui Chen, Xu Ju, Wumitijiang Yimaer, Wangjian Zhang, Shao Lin, Yuantao Hao, Jing Gu, Jinghua Li

Page range: 23-49

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Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused hundreds of millions of infections and millions of deaths over past two years. Currently, many countries have still not been able to take the pandemic under control. In this review, we systematically summarized what we have done to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspectives of virus transmission, public health control measures, to the development and vaccination of COVID-19 vaccines. As a virus most likely coming from bats, the SARS-CoV-2 may transmit among people via airborne, faecal-oral, vertical or foodborne routes. Our meta-analysis suggested that the R 0 of COVID-19 was 2.9 (95% CI: 2.7–3.1), and the estimates in Africa and Europe could be higher. The median R t could decrease by 23–96% following the nonpharmacological interventions, including lockdown, isolation, social distance, and face mask, etc. Comprehensive intervention and lockdown were the most effective measures to control the pandemic. According to the pooled R 0 in our meta-analysis, there should be at least 93.3% (95% CI: 89.9–96.2%) people being vaccinated around the world. Limited amount of vaccines and the inequity issues in vaccine allocation call for more international cooperation to achieve the anti-epidemic goals and vaccination fairness.

Open Access March 1, 2022

Cold chain and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 transmission: a review for challenges and coping strategies

Jiangtao Liu, Tongzhang Zheng, Wei Xia, Shunqing Xu, Yuanyuan Li

Page range: 50-65

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Abstract

Since June 2020, the re-emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemics in parts of China was linked to the cold chain, which attracted extensive attention and heated discussions from the public. According to the typical characteristics of these epidemics, we speculated a possible route of transmission from cold chain to human. A series of factors in the supply chain contributed to the epidemics if the cold chain were contaminated by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), such as temperature, humidity, personal hygiene/protection, and disinfection. The workers who worked in the cold chain at the receiving end faced a higher risk of being infected when they were not well protected. Facing the difficult situation, China put forward targeted and powerful countermeasures to block the cold chain-related risk. However, in the context of the unstable pandemic situation globally, the risk of the cold chain needs to be recognized and evaluated seriously. Hence, in this review, we reviewed the cold chain-related epidemics in China, analyzed the possible mechanisms, introduced the Chinese experience, and suggested coping strategies for the global epidemic prevention and control.

Open Access February 24, 2022

Asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection in Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic

Yutong Wang, Ke Zheng, Wenjing Gao, Jun Lv, Canqing Yu, Lan Wang, Zijun Wang, Bo Wang, Chunxiao Liao, Liming Li

Page range: 66-88

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Abstract

With the presence of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) asymptomatic infections detected, their proportion, transmission potential, and other aspects such as immunity and related emerging challenges have attracted people’s attention. We have found that based on high-quality research, asymptomatic infections account for at least one-third of the total cases, whereas based on systematic review and meta-analysis, the proportion is about one-fifth. Evaluating the true transmission potential of asymptomatic cases is difficult but critical, since it may affect national policies in response to COVID-19. We have summarized the current evidence and found, compared with symptomatic cases, the transmission capacity of asymptomatic individuals is weaker, even though they have similar viral load and relatively short virus shedding duration. As the outbreak progresses, asymptomatic infections have also been found to develop long COVID-19. In addition, the role of asymptomatic infection in COVID-19 remains to be further revealed as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants continue to emerge. Nevertheless, as asymptomatic infections transmit the SARS-CoV-2 virus silently, they still pose a substantial threat to public health. Therefore, it is essential to conduct screening to obtain more knowledge about the asymptomatic infections and to detect them as soon as possible; meanwhile, management of them is also a key point in the fight against COVID-19 community transmission. The different management of asymptomatic infections in various countries are compared and the experience in China is displayed in detail.

Open Access February 28, 2022

Transmission dynamics model and the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic: applications and challenges

Jinxing Guan, Yang Zhao, Yongyue Wei, Sipeng Shen, Dongfang You, Ruyang Zhang, Theis Lange, Feng Chen

Page range: 89-109

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Abstract

Since late 2019, the beginning of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, transmission dynamics models have achieved great development and were widely used in predicting and policy making. Here, we provided an introduction to the history of disease transmission, summarized transmission dynamics models into three main types: compartment extension, parameter extension and population-stratified extension models, highlight the key contribution of transmission dynamics models in COVID-19 pandemic: estimating epidemiological parameters, predicting the future trend, evaluating the effectiveness of control measures and exploring different possibilities/scenarios. Finally, we pointed out the limitations and challenges lie ahead of transmission dynamics models.

Perspective

Open Access February 14, 2022

Converging multi-modality datasets to build efficient drug repositioning pipelines against Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias

Zheng Yin, Stephen T.C. Wong

Page range: 110-113

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Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) affects more than 50 million people worldwide but there is no clear therapeutic option affordable for the general patient population. Recently, drug repositioning studies featuring collaborations between academic institutes, medical centers, and hospitals are generating novel therapeutics candidates against these devastating diseases and filling in an important area for healthcare that is poorly represented by pharmaceutical companies. Such drug repositioning studies converge expertise from bioinformatics, chemical informatics, medical informatics, artificial intelligence, high throughput and high-content screening and systems biology. They also take advantage of multi-scale, multi-modality datasets, ranging from transcriptomic and proteomic data, electronical medical records, and medical imaging to social media information of patient behaviors and emotions and epidemiology profiles of disease populations, in order to gain comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms and drug effects. We proposed a recursive drug repositioning paradigm involving the iteration of three processing steps of modeling, prediction, and validation to identify known drugs and bioactive compounds for AD/ADRD. This recursive paradigm has the potential of quickly obtaining a panel of robust novel drug candidates for AD/ADRD and gaining in-depth understanding of disease mechanisms from those repositioned drug candidates, subsequently improving the success rate of predicting novel hits.

About this journal

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CN: CN 10-1793/R
On-line ISSN: 2749-9642
Print ISSN: 2097-0733 (applies for copies in China)

Medical Review is a peer reviewed open access journal affiliate to Peking University Health Science Center. MR publishes high-quality internationally competitive review articles on cutting-edge progress and achievement from various areas of medical science, specifically focuses on clinical medicine, basic medicine, preventive medicine, medical ethics and multidisciplinary and emerging topics. MR is also committed to promote fundamental benefits among medical research communities, decision-makers and the public by conscientiously reviewing strategical and macro-level policies on medical-related issues and public health.

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Volume 2 Issue 1 - Special Issue on Prevention and Control of COVID-19

Issue of Medical Review

Frontmatter

Cold-chain transmission, asymptomatic infection, mass screening, vaccine, and modelling: what we know so far for coronavirus disease 2019 control and experience in China

Evolutionary dynamics of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 genomes

Abstract

A review on COVID-19 transmission, epidemiological features, prevention and vaccination

Abstract

Cold chain and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 transmission: a review for challenges and coping strategies

Abstract

Asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection in Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic

Abstract

Transmission dynamics model and the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic: applications and challenges

Abstract

Converging multi-modality datasets to build efficient drug repositioning pipelines against Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias

Abstract