Water Wheel July/August 2020: Disease Research

Abstract

The infection pathway and high infection rate of this causative virus affect our social lives, and even our behaviours are impacted and changed. A question we should be asking is if any of these adversities could have been avoided had we been more prepared? Or, even more fundamentally, is it at all possible to be prepared for dealing with the diagnosis of a pandemic? What are the driving forces behind research in the field of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) – is it engagement with current known diseases and their related strains, or is it lessons learnt from historic epizootics? In reality, it is incredibly difficult to prepare for EIDs, be it human or animal diseases, especially when the epidemiology and infection rates are not yet understood. This begs the question, how do we develop accurate and reliable diagnostic tools for EIDs if the infectious agent is not yet known? The current Covid-19 pandemic, caused by the infectious virus, SARS-CoV-2, is an example of how this zoonotic coronavirus became pandemic within just a few months.

Categories