|
 
 |
| EDITORIAL |
|
| Year : 2020 | Volume
: 9
| Issue : 5 | Page : 1-2 |
|
IJHAS special issue on COVID-19: Supporting scientific surge
Suresh Bhojraj
Pro Chancellor, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Mysore, Karnataka, India
| Date of Submission | 18-May-2020 |
| Date of Decision | 18-May-2020 |
| Date of Acceptance | 18-May-2020 |
| Date of Web Publication | 04-Jun-2020 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Suresh Bhojraj
Pro Chancellor, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, Mysore, Karnataka
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijhas.IJHAS_118_20
How to cite this article:
Bhojraj S. IJHAS special issue on COVID-19: Supporting scientific surge. Int J Health Allied Sci 2020;9, Suppl S1:1-2 |
How to cite this URL:
Bhojraj S. IJHAS special issue on COVID-19: Supporting scientific surge. Int J Health Allied Sci [serial online] 2020 [cited 2023 Mar 27];9, Suppl S1:1-2. Available from: https://www.ijhas.in/text.asp?2020/9/5/1/285959 |
The coronavirus pandemic has triggered great deal of science happenings globally including understanding the disease and its spread, clinical management, discovery of new drugs and vaccines, development of rapid testing diagnostics, innovations in medical practices, mathematical modeling, and predictive sciences and the list is endless. This has also resulted in a surge of scientific research pursuits and publishing of the findings. The need at present is to disseminate as much as scientific information available to all those engaged in the care of the patients affected by the coronavirus so that the benefit of any important finding can be extended to them or help nations build strategies in preventing the spread of pandemic.
This new threat to global health has, as in the two preceding instances of severe acute respiratory syndrome (2002 and 2003) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (2012 to the present), has posed critical challenges for the public health, research, and medical communities.[1] The efficiency of transmission for any respiratory virus has important implications for containment and mitigation strategies. Besides the containment strategies of travel restrictions and social distancing to reduce its transmission and spread, several efforts are in pipeline for the development of therapies that can help cure, including the repurposing of drugs, vaccine development, convalescent plasma, immunoglobulins, and stem cell therapies.[2] We may find answers in the next few weeks or a few years, and in the process, we may come to terms with it, as was the case during the HIV threat.
The efforts for the development of vaccines are on in more than hundred different laboratories and industries and almost in every country that has been affected significantly by the pandemic. The hyper-collaborations between some of the best laboratories in the world and the pharmaceutical industries and academia provides the hope of having a vaccine later this year; however, the outcome of the benefit of the vaccine is something that is to be waited and watched for. How the vaccine will respond to the various strains of coronavirus is once again a question that needs to be answered over a period. The repurposing of the hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, and many other antiviral drugs is a stark reminder of the fact the search for a new drug is a time limiting and expensive process which science may not be able to pursue so easily.
Clinical trials have been always under strict regulatory oversight and had been a deterrent and made them expensive that many new drugs were abandoned without being pursued further. While patient safety is of utmost priority, global studies that are made collaboratively will perhaps pave the way for a new era of clinical research.
Of equal interest is the impact the COVID-19 has made in the work, lifestyle, and behavioral changes and maybe something we may have to contend with even after the pandemic. The support, strategies, and solutions that will be required for this is something which the medical community will have to equip itself in the immediate future. The clinical practice too will change and adapt to the fact that every patient may potentially be the carrier of the coronavirus and will have to be tested for the same before any surgical intervention that may be required in a patient is cared for.
The emergence and re-emergence of diseases will continue to be a scenario that the health profession and nations will have to contend with and the only we of preventing emergent situations and accompanied chaos through continuous monitoring, developing rapid detection methods and supporting a robust research structure in understanding the microbiome around us and the causative factors that make them affect the humanity. This pandemic perhaps brought the scientists of all genres working together, which was not visible earlier. The health-care professionals, chemists, biologists, social scientists, economists, policymakers, funding agencies, and the industry all to come to come on a common platform to fight a single disease such is its dreadfulness. The need, therefore, is to take full advantage of existing knowledge and experience to improve the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and control of the disease and accelerate the development of drugs and vaccines to save lives.
Every challenge also provides an opportunity for understanding more of the science, but some will have only a limited window, and it is important that all such information does get published so that the posterity can benefit for the same. This special issue of the International Journal of Health and Allied Sciences is an attempt in this direction and maybe value to several thousands of health professionals who are presently engaged in the fight against coronavirus.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Cascella M, Rajnik M, Cuomo A. Features, evaluation and treatment coronavirus (COVID-19). In: StatPearls. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2020. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554776/. [Last updated on 2020 Apr 06].  |
| 2. | |
|
Search Pubmed for