Int. J. One Health Vol.7 Article-10
Review Article
International Journal of One Health, 7(1): 78-87
https://doi.org/10.14202/IJOH.2021.78-87
Global epidemiology of coronavirus disease 2019 and lessons for effective control of this and future pandemics
2. Department of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Engineering and Science, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway.
3. Department of Livestock and Pasture Science, University of Fort Hare, Alice 5700, South Africa.
4. Department of Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria.
5. Spatial Epidemiology Laboratory, School of Veterinary Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Background and Aim: Barely 1 year after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in China, the virus has infected approximately 120 million people, caused around 3 million deaths, and adversely affected the global economy. Despite stringent measures to flatten the epidemiologic curve of the pandemic, there have been spikes and waves of the infection in many countries, particularly in the American, European, and Asian continents. This review critically evaluated the global epidemiology of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to provide advice on other possible ways of managing the disease as various COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out. To effectively control this and possible future epidemics/pandemics, there is a need to maintain a healthy balance between saving lives and livelihoods in the implementation of lockdowns. Unwarranted human exposures to animals, particularly pangolins, civet cats, bats, dromedary camels, and other wildlife known to be reservoirs and intermediate hosts of coronaviruses should be prevented. All the identified strains of SARS-CoV-2, including the highly infectious UK and South African variants, should be incorporated in COVID-19 vaccine production; to widen the protection spectrum. Some of the COVID-19 vaccines require primary inoculation, booster vaccination after 2-4 weeks and annual revaccination for adequate immunization against SARS-CoV-2. Survivors of COVID-19 may require only a single vaccine dozing and annual revaccination thereafter. Adoption of One Health approach and the development of globally coordinated active surveillance systems against emerging and reemerging zoonotic viruses are imperative.
Keywords: COVID-19, coronaviruses, emerging zoonoses, new variant SARS-CoV-2, pandemic diseases, SARS-CoV-2, public health.
Received: 18-11-2020 Accepted: 05-02-2021 Published online: 16-03-2021
Corresponding author: Yusuf Feyisara Zakariya E-mail: yusuf.zakariya@uia.no
DOI: 10.14202/IJOH.2021.78-87
Copyright: Njoga, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.