Gopichandran Vijayaprasad, Subramaniam Sudarshini
Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, ESIC Medical College and PGIMSR, KK Nagar, Chennai 600 078 INDIA.
Assistant Professor, Institute of Community Medicine, Madras Medical College, Chennai 600 003 INDIA.
Indian J Med Ethics. 2020 Apr-Jun;V(2):1-4. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2020.026.
China reported cases of a severe form of pneumonia in December 2019 from Wuhan city, Hubei province. The virus causing this illness was identified as the novel Coronavirus 2019, which has now been christened Covid-19. The illness is characterised by fever, cough, body pain and in a few cases, progression to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) which marks very serious damage to the lungs (1-4). Apart from Wuhan, China, the virus has spread to 26 other countries as on February 18, 2020. Of these 26 countries, the cases of Covid-19 have been exported directly from China in 23 of them. As on February 23, 2020, a total of 78,811 confirmed cases, 2445 deaths have been reported globally. The World Health Organization declared this as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020 (5).
2019年12月，中国湖北省武汉市报告了多例严重肺炎病例。导致这种疾病的病毒被确定为新型冠状病毒2019，现在被命名为新冠病毒病（Covid-19）。该疾病的特征为发热、咳嗽、身体疼痛，少数情况下会发展为急性呼吸窘迫综合征（ARDS），这标志着肺部受到非常严重的损害（1-4）。截至2020年2月18日，除中国武汉外，该病毒已传播至其他26个国家。在这26个国家中，有23个国家的新冠病毒病病例是直接从中国输入的。截至2020年2月23日，全球共报告了78811例确诊病例，2445例死亡病例。世界卫生组织于2020年1月30日宣布这是一场国际关注的突发公共卫生事件（PHEIC）（5）。
