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Journal ArticleDOI

Nurture to nature via COVID-19, a self-regenerating environmental strategy of environment in global context.

TL;DR: Viability of CoV-19 virus found to have a lot of correlation with aquatic and terrestrial environmental parameters such as pH, surface type, temperature etc, and air pollution is found to increase the risk of COVID-19 infection, therefore, use of mask and alcohols based standard sterilisers is strongly recommended.
About: This article is published in Science of The Total Environment.The article was published on 2020-08-10 and is currently open access. It has received 127 citations till now.
Citations
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01 Jan 2020
TL;DR: Prolonged viral shedding provides the rationale for a strategy of isolation of infected patients and optimal antiviral interventions in the future.
Abstract: Summary Background Since December, 2019, Wuhan, China, has experienced an outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of patients with COVID-19 have been reported but risk factors for mortality and a detailed clinical course of illness, including viral shedding, have not been well described. Methods In this retrospective, multicentre cohort study, we included all adult inpatients (≥18 years old) with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from Jinyintan Hospital and Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital (Wuhan, China) who had been discharged or had died by Jan 31, 2020. Demographic, clinical, treatment, and laboratory data, including serial samples for viral RNA detection, were extracted from electronic medical records and compared between survivors and non-survivors. We used univariable and multivariable logistic regression methods to explore the risk factors associated with in-hospital death. Findings 191 patients (135 from Jinyintan Hospital and 56 from Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital) were included in this study, of whom 137 were discharged and 54 died in hospital. 91 (48%) patients had a comorbidity, with hypertension being the most common (58 [30%] patients), followed by diabetes (36 [19%] patients) and coronary heart disease (15 [8%] patients). Multivariable regression showed increasing odds of in-hospital death associated with older age (odds ratio 1·10, 95% CI 1·03–1·17, per year increase; p=0·0043), higher Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score (5·65, 2·61–12·23; p Interpretation The potential risk factors of older age, high SOFA score, and d-dimer greater than 1 μg/mL could help clinicians to identify patients with poor prognosis at an early stage. Prolonged viral shedding provides the rationale for a strategy of isolation of infected patients and optimal antiviral interventions in the future. Funding Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences; National Science Grant for Distinguished Young Scholars; National Key Research and Development Program of China; The Beijing Science and Technology Project; and Major Projects of National Science and Technology on New Drug Creation and Development.

4,408 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper discuss structure, genome organization, entry of CoVs into target cells, and provide insights into past and present outbreaks of human CoV outbreaks and develop efficient prevention and treatment strategies to deal with this continuous threat.
Abstract: Coronaviruses (CoVs) are RNA viruses that have become a major public health concern since the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoV (SARS-CoV) outbreak in 2002. The continuous evolution of coronaviruses was further highlighted with the emergence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-CoV (MERS-CoV) outbreak in 2012. Currently, the world is concerned about the 2019 novel CoV (SARS-CoV-2) that was initially identified in the city of Wuhan, China in December 2019. Patients presented with severe viral pneumonia and respiratory illness. The number of cases has been mounting since then. As of late February 2020, tens of thousands of cases and several thousand deaths have been reported in China alone, in addition to thousands of cases in other countries. Although the fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is currently lower than SARS-CoV, the virus seems to be highly contagious based on the number of infected cases to date. In this review, we discuss structure, genome organization, entry of CoVs into target cells, and provide insights into past and present outbreaks. The future of human CoV outbreaks will not only depend on how the viruses will evolve, but will also depend on how we develop efficient prevention and treatment strategies to deal with this continuous threat.

457 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This study imagines what the antivirus-built environment looks like based on the lessons learned and the importance of designing a healthy and sustainable built environment to add additional security layers to overcome future virus-like attacks.

380 citations


Cites background from "Nurture to nature via COVID-19, a s..."

  • ...Architects, planners, and built environment professionals are keen to examine many social and spatial implications to generate new patterns and configurations of use (Paital, 2020; Salama, 2020)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a critical analysis of 57 studies on the nexus between COVID-19 and the environment, published in nine journals up to May 2020. And they identify four underlying research clusters based on a systematic content analysis of the studies.

215 citations


Cites background from "Nurture to nature via COVID-19, a s..."

  • ...NO2 levels in major Indian cities such as Ahmedabad,Mumbai, and Pune decreased between 40 and 50% at the time of lockdown (Wright, 2020)....

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  • ...It has been suggested that the hot and humid climates in India might have been the cause of relatively low transmission rate of COVID-19 cases....

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  • ...In Europe, CO2 levels are expected to dropby390million tonnes due to lockdown (Paital, 2020)....

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  • ...The world's largest coronavirus lockdown is having a dramatic impact on pollution in India....

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  • ...Due to the drop in fossil fuel consumption, air pollution has dropped drastically in several countries, such as China, Italy, the USA, and India (Paital, 2020)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Investigating impacts of COVID-19 mitigation measures on ambient air quality in five Indian cities using in-situ measurements from 2015 to 2020 indicated improvements in air quality may be considered a temporary lockdown benefit as revitalising the economy could reverse this trend.

190 citations


Cites background from "Nurture to nature via COVID-19, a s..."

  • ...Paital (2020) Global (27 countries, China, India and Europe) • Using satellite data and a network of more than 10,000 air quality stations, the authors investigated whether or not reduced air pollution levels during Feb-Mar 2020 were related to COVID-19 lockdown events....

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics and treatment and clinical outcomes of patients with laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection in Wuhan, China, were reported.

36,578 citations


"Nurture to nature via COVID-19, a s..." refers background in this paper

  • ...The virus CoV-19 usually propagates and induces the clinical symptoms in infected people within 14 days (Li et al., 2020a, b; Huang et al., 2020)....

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  • ...To come up with specific drugs or vaccines, several research institutions are working 24/7 although, conventional or alternative medicines using both wet and dry laboratory approaches are suggested for the treatment of COVID-19 (Hati et al., 2012; Paital et al., 2014, 2017, Cao et al., 2020; Chu et al., 2004, Chafekar and Fielding , 2018; Mishra et al., 2019; Caly et al., 2020; Dong et al., 2020; Jin et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2020; Raja et al., 2020; Swain et al., 2020; Vellingiri et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors used univariable and multivariable logistic regression methods to explore the risk factors associated with in-hospital death, including older age, high SOFA score and d-dimer greater than 1 μg/mL.

20,189 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This study evaluated the antiviral efficiency of five FAD-approved drugs including ribavirin, penciclovir, nitazoxanide, nafamostat, chloroquine and two well-known broad-spectrum antiviral drugs remdesivir and favipiravir against a clinical isolate of 2019-nCoV in vitro.
Abstract: Dear Editor, In December 2019, a novel pneumonia caused by a previously unknown pathogen emerged in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China. The initial cases were linked to exposures in a seafood market in Wuhan. As of January 27, 2020, the Chinese authorities reported 2835 confirmed cases in mainland China, including 81 deaths. Additionally, 19 confirmed cases were identified in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and 39 imported cases were identified in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, United States, Vietnam, Singapore, Nepal, France, Australia and Canada. The pathogen was soon identified as a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which is closely related to sever acute respiratory syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV). Currently, there is no specific treatment against the new virus. Therefore, identifying effective antiviral agents to combat the disease is urgently needed. An efficient approach to drug discovery is to test whether the existing antiviral drugs are effective in treating related viral infections. The 2019-nCoV belongs to Betacoronavirus which also contains SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV). Several drugs, such as ribavirin, interferon, lopinavir-ritonavir, corticosteroids, have been used in patients with SARS or MERS, although the efficacy of some drugs remains controversial. In this study, we evaluated the antiviral efficiency of five FAD-approved drugs including ribavirin, penciclovir, nitazoxanide, nafamostat, chloroquine and two well-known broad-spectrum antiviral drugs remdesivir (GS5734) and favipiravir (T-705) against a clinical isolate of 2019nCoV in vitro. Standard assays were carried out to measure the effects of these compounds on the cytotoxicity, virus yield and infection rates of 2019-nCoVs. Firstly, the cytotoxicity of the candidate compounds in Vero E6 cells (ATCC-1586) was determined by the CCK8 assay. Then, Vero E6 cells were infected with nCoV2019BetaCoV/Wuhan/WIV04/2019 at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 0.05 in the presence of varying concentrations of the test drugs. DMSO was used in the controls. Efficacies were evaluated by quantification of viral copy numbers in the cell supernatant via quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) and confirmed with visualization of virus nucleoprotein (NP) expression through immunofluorescence microscopy at 48 h post infection (p.i.) (cytopathic effect was not obvious at this time point of infection). Among the seven tested drugs, high concentrations of three nucleoside analogs including ribavirin (half-maximal effective concentration (EC50)= 109.50 μM, halfcytotoxic concentration (CC50) > 400 μM, selectivity index (SI) > 3.65), penciclovir (EC50= 95.96 μM, CC50 > 400 μM, SI > 4.17) and favipiravir (EC50= 61.88 μM, CC50 > 400 μM, SI > 6.46) were required to reduce the viral infection (Fig. 1a and Supplementary information, Fig. S1). However, favipiravir has been shown to be 100% effective in protecting mice against Ebola virus challenge, although its EC50 value in Vero E6 cells was as high as 67 μM, suggesting further in vivo studies are recommended to evaluate this antiviral nucleoside. Nafamostat, a potent inhibitor of MERS-CoV, which prevents membrane fusion, was inhibitive against the 2019-nCoV infection (EC50= 22.50 μM, CC50 > 100 μM, SI > 4.44). Nitazoxanide, a commercial antiprotozoal agent with an antiviral potential against a broad range of viruses including human and animal coronaviruses, inhibited the 2019-nCoV at a low-micromolar concentration (EC50= 2.12 μM; CC50 > 35.53 μM; SI > 16.76). Further in vivo evaluation of this drug against 2019-nCoV infection is recommended. Notably, two compounds remdesivir (EC50= 0.77 μM; CC50 > 100 μM; SI > 129.87) and chloroquine (EC50= 1.13 μM; CC50 > 100 μM, SI > 88.50) potently blocked virus infection at low-micromolar concentration and showed high SI (Fig. 1a, b). Remdesivir has been recently recognized as a promising antiviral drug against a wide array of RNA viruses (including SARS/MERS-CoV) infection in cultured cells, mice and nonhuman primate (NHP) models. It is currently under clinical development for the treatment of Ebola virus infection. Remdesivir is an adenosine analogue, which incorporates into nascent viral RNA chains and results in pre-mature termination. Our time-ofaddition assay showed remdesivir functioned at a stage post virus entry (Fig. 1c, d), which is in agreement with its putative antiviral mechanism as a nucleotide analogue. Warren et al. showed that in NHP model, intravenous administration of 10mg/kg dose of remdesivir resulted in concomitant persistent levels of its active form in the blood (10 μM) and conferred 100% protection against Ebola virus infection. Our data showed that EC90 value of remdesivir against 2019-nCoV in Vero E6 cells was 1.76 μM, suggesting its working concentration is likely to be achieved in NHP. Our preliminary data (Supplementary information, Fig. S2) showed that remdesivir also inhibited virus infection efficiently in a human cell line (human liver cancer Huh-7 cells), which is sensitive to 2019-nCoV. Chloroquine, a widely-used anti-malarial and autoimmune disease drug, has recently been reported as a potential broadspectrum antiviral drug. Chloroquine is known to block virus infection by increasing endosomal pH required for virus/ cell fusion, as well as interfering with the glycosylation of cellular receptors of SARS-CoV. Our time-of-addition assay demonstrated that chloroquine functioned at both entry, and at postentry stages of the 2019-nCoV infection in Vero E6 cells (Fig. 1c, d). Besides its antiviral activity, chloroquine has an immune-modulating activity, which may synergistically enhance its antiviral effect in vivo. Chloroquine is widely distributed in the whole body, including lung, after oral administration. The EC90 value of chloroquine against the 2019-nCoV in Vero

5,660 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In hospitalized adult patients with severe Covid-19, no benefit was observed with lopinavir–ritonavir treatment beyond standard care, and future trials in patients withsevere illness may help to confirm or exclude the possibility of a treatment benefit.
Abstract: Background No therapeutics have yet been proven effective for the treatment of severe illness caused by SARS-CoV-2. Methods We conducted a randomized, controlled, open-label trial involvin...

4,293 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Hydroxychloroquine treatment is significantly associated with viral load reduction/disappearance in COVID-19 patients and its effect is reinforced by azithromycin, which was significantly more efficient for virus elimination.

4,213 citations

Trending Questions (1)
What is the second mutation of Covid?

It is because, introduction of COVID-19 to nature was an outcome of mutation from two of its pre-existing forms, although, debate on it is still continuing.