coronavirus Archives - Omics Help Desk

23Mar '20

Figure shows a screenshot of the Genomic epidemiology of novel coronavirus. Maintained by the Nextstrain team. Enabled by data from GISAID. Showing 955 of 955 genomes sampled between Dec 2019 and Mar 2020.

Earlier we shared a Coronavirus vs Influenza Table listing the differences between the coronavirus and the flu. The numbers in the table are updated continuously as new data is reported by reputable organizations such as the World Health organization (WHO) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) of countries that are funding and managing them well. Here we offer a list of the most informative, most helpful, and best-designed online visualizations of the coronavirus pandemic.

Latest List Update: December 6 2020

These Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 web sites offer different types of statistics and visualizations:

Comparison of Coronavirus and the Flu

patyb

Health

8Mar '20

Latest Table Update: August 8, 2020 (Table below text)

Some say the coronavirus is just like the flu. Is it? The answer is that while there are similarities, no, the coronavirus is not like the flu. It is different in many important ways. The main difference is the fact that when it spread in early 2020 in the Western world, people did not have immunity to the coronavirus because it was brand new and there is still no vaccine against it. No reason to panic but we should be cautious. The most similar virus based on the RNA sequence is SARS not influenza. The risk to children is moderate for coronavirus but is high for influenza. The mortality rate for coronavirus is much higher than influenza and varies between countries. The mortality rate in August 2020 was (5.3% in China) (14% in Italy) (2% in South Korea) (3.3% in USA), while for influenza it is 0.1% as measured in the 2018-2019 influenza season. The risk for the elderly is about 20% higher for coronavirus. The time that people who are infected with coronavirus remain infectious or contagious is 17-24 (middle 50%) while for influenza it is 8 days. Coronavirus survives on surfaces for up to 9 days while the flu virus only 2 days. On May 1 2020, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19. On June 15 2020, the FDA revoked the EUA for drug Hydroxychloroquine as a drug to treat coronavirus infections due to risk of heart rhythm problems.

The numbers in this table will be updated as new data is reported by reputable organizations such as the World Health organization (WHO) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) of countries that are funding and managing them well.

The Day You Test Your Viruses at Home

patyb

Health

3Mar '20

One day, people will be able to buy a ‘lab in a suitcase’, and use it to test their viruses at home or when travelling abroad or anywhere. It could be a great way to prevent the spread of viral epidemics. No, it is not available yet, but it might be for the next outbreak, if the Oxford Nanopore device manufacturers make the end-to-end testing workflow easy and the price affordable.

A group of scientists from the ARTIC group are working with Oxford Nanopore to sequence the coronavirus COVID-19 in real-time, contributing to a rapid 8-hour end-to-end workflow. Currently, once a sample is received by a laboratory, and that may also take time, it takes 24 hours to get a result, 24-48 hours in some locations.

In January, Oxford Nanopore noted that it had sent 200 of their portable MinION devices to China, to enable the rapid, local sequencing of the coronavirus COVID-19 .

The scientists from universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham, Cambridge, Oxford, KU Leuven, UCLA and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre, had previously developed and delivered ‘lab in a suitcase’ sequencing resources/solutions and collaborative local training in multiple outbreaks including Ebola, Zika virus and Yellow Fever.

What if people could test their coronavirus COVID-19 at home? How would it have changed the current outbreak and epidemic pattern?

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