Running Head: COVID-19 1
COVID-19 2
COVID- 19
Thesis statement
This article will examine various articles that have information on the COVID 19 pandemic, which is a new Virus in the world, the country it originated from, the kind of people that are more susceptible to the Virus, how it has affected different parts of the world and what is being done to control the Virus.
Discussions of the COVID-19 Pandemic Based on Various Articles
Coronavirus, popularly known as Covid 19, was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The Virus has spread all over the globe, and It has been recorded in more than one million deaths and at least 41 million confirmed cases. As a virtual Virus, it has posed a threat to the health security of the world. The pandemic has affected all facets of life; business, social life, politics, justice systems, and others. The Virus has attracted scholarly attention as people get new information about the Virus each new day. This article gives a scholarly overview of the pandemic covering three main aspects; the main immune system that the Virus affects, the most affected age, and how it affects immunocompromised individuals.
This article argues that since Covid-19 is a new Virus and humans do not have a protective immunity against it. The disease infects affected tissues in the body, which makes immunocompromised individuals weaker. Immunocompromised patients are more susceptible to opportunistic pathogens. If the immunocompromised system has not been detected and appreciated in an individual, it may delay diagnosis (Singh et al., 2020). The body responds to the Virus depending on the ability of both innate and acquired immunity. Immunocompromised patients, such as patients suffering from poorly controlled and managed HIV/AIDS, chronic drug users, and organ transplant recipients, tend to experience severe consequences of covid 19. Generally, immunocompromised hosts tend to be more affected. There is a need to create awareness for more informed individual decisions and enhanced systems care.
According to this article, covid-19 has a lesser impact on physically fit individuals, children, adolescents and mainly targets sick, unfit, and battling chronic diseases. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery tend to weaken the immune system exposing victims of diseases such as cancer to high risks of covid-19 (Derosa et al., 2020).
Being physically active and reducing sedentary behaviour are essential in maintaining physical fitness which aid in the improvement and balance of several physical valences and promoting a better quality of general health and life. This also helps in reducing the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases which could make people more susceptible to COVID-19 infections.
For cancer patients, the disease has affected their immunity and damaged the healthcare system such that the patients may not have been receiving proper medical attention. Any individual with an impaired immune system has a low ability to fight the Virus. Cancers that invade and displace normal bone marrow, such as leukaemia or lymphoma, can lead to thrombocytopenia and an associated immunocompromised state.
Chemotherapy damage to bone marrow cells can lead to thrombocytopenia and neutropenia, rendering patients more susceptible to infections Consequently, they display symptoms easily and experience severe effects of the disease such as death. The authors of this article present that the Virus affects elderly people more than youth and children. Also, the pandemic has claimed the lives of more elderly people across the globe. A study conducted on 8866 cases revealed that at least 47.7 % of the patients were aged above 50 years. The study also revealed that the Virus affected more men than women. Elderly people have physiological challenges that are associated with aging (Yi et al., 2020). They are also the most affected by chronic and underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable to the Virus that targets affected tissues. Research also shows that SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has caused more deaths than the Virus. The disease’s initial and major symptom is fever, which is followed by other symptoms like headache, sore throat, shortness of breath, diarrheal, and chest pains.
The authors of this article argue that as the pandemic continues to evolve unpredictably and rapidly, the elderly population is affected. Statistics and trends display the magnitude of the scenario. The paper has focused its attention on the relationship between immunosenescence, malnutrition, and the higher mortality and morbidity rates in older patients.
The authors further propose nutritional corrections can minimize the innate and acquired immunity alterations present in elderly community members (Bincivenga et al., 2020). The approach can also minimize the worse outcomes observed among elderly coronavirus patients. The deeper analysis also reveals that the disease affects elderly people with a least two comorbidities and underlying health conditions such as chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, and chronic pulmonary disease.
The complex interplay between immunity and nutrition in aging people, due to alterations of both innate and adaptive immune responses, negatively impacts antibody production, response to vaccination and leads to susceptibility to infections. Due to the age-dependent alterations of the immune system that may be implemented by nutritional deficits, a relevant percentage of elderly patients progresses to insidious systemic inflammation, mainly affecting the lung, heart, renal function and coagulation system. Elderly people are at a greater risk of COVID-19 complications and death because there’s an increase in physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour. It reduces their levels of physical fitness which makes them more prone to cardiovascular diseases and they may end up suffering from an accelerated organic and cognitive decline including falling due to postural imbalance.
Coronavirus has a mortality rate of 2%, and a major complication related to the disease is acute respiratory distress symptoms. Covid-19 has a clinical spectrum that ranges from mild asymptomatic infections to severe failure of the respiratory system. A lack of control of inflammatory response among covid-19 patients is the main cause of deterioration among covid-190 patients (Colofransesco et al., 2020).
A person is considered to have severe covid 19 if one has a respiratory rate of 30 or more per minute, SpO2 of less than 93%, and a relevant progression of more than 50 %. The paper also points out that individuals with immunity disorders such as HIV/AIDS, severe kidney disease, and diabetes. The COVID-19 pathological process exhibits a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations, which ranges from asymptomatic infections, to mild (common cold-type), moderate, and finally severe (~15%) infections.
The severe infections require hospitalization to ensure assisted respiratory support and other medical treatments until recovery, or it can cause the patient’s death. The broad spectrum of clinical manifestations found in COVID-19 patients has been associated with risk factors such as gender and age. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or diseases or treatments are affecting the immune system result in the highest risk of severe illness and death. This article is about an observational study on the susceptibility of patients with rheumatic disease to the coronavirus. A retrospective study of the patients was done at the epicenter of the disease. Patients who suffer from the rheumatic disease were contacted via telephone. Researchers also collected covid-19 diagnosis and exposure data.
After analysis, researchers found that such patients are more susceptible compared to the general population (Zhong et al., 2020). These patients have impaired immune systems that make them vulnerable to infections. These diseases are complicated by basic immunodeficiency that can result in immunosuppression. Researchers study also show that patients with rheumatic disease who take hydroxychloroquine has a lower risk of COVID-19 infection than patients taking other disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. According to the preliminary reports available, the median time from infection to recovery for mild cases is approximately 2 weeks and 3-6 weeks for critical or severe conditions.
References
Bencivenga, L., Rengo, G., & Varricchi, G. (2020). Elderly at time of COronaVIrus disease 2019 (COVID-19): possible role of immunosenescence and malnutrition. Geroscience, 42(4), 1089-1092. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-020-00218-9
Colafrancesco, S., Scrivo, R., Barbati, C., Conti, F., & Priori, R. (2020). Targeting the Immune System for Pulmonary Inflammation and Cardiovascular Complications in COVID-19 Patients. Frontiers In Immunology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01439
Derosa, L., Melenotte, C., Griscelli, F., Gachot, B., Marabelle, A., Kroemer, G., & Zitvogel, L. (2020). The immuno-oncological challenge of COVID-19. Nature Cancer, 1(10), 946-964. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-020-00122-3
Singh, D., Singh, P., & Singh Sisodia, D. (2019). Compositional model based on factorial evolution for realizing multi-task learning in bacterial virulent protein prediction. Artificial Intelligence In Medicine, 101, 101757. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artmed.2019.101757
Yi, Y., Lagniton, P., Ye, S., Li, E., & Xu, R. (2020). COVID-19: what has been learned and to be learned about the novel coronavirus disease. International Journal Of Biological Sciences, 16(10), 1753-1766. https://doi.org/10.7150/ijbs.45134
Zhong, J., Shen, G., Yang, H., Huang, A., Chen, X., Dong, L., & Song, S. (2020). COVID-19 in patients with rheumatic disease in Hubei province, China: a multicentre retrospective observational study. The Lancet Rheumatology, 2(9), e557-e564.2
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