Assessment of worldwide COVID-19 transmission landscape for predicting
its upcoming severity along with a clinical update for its prevention
Abstract
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc across the globe.
Although there are several controversies regarding its origin, the
worldwide scientific fraternity currently indulges in developing various
therapeutic strategies to combat this threat. Consequently, we aimed to
provide a comprehensive evaluation of this pandemic’s global
transmission landscape to get an insight into its imminent fate on
global populations. For this, we have analyzed the data on daily
reported COVID-19 cases for 294 days since inception, i.e., from 31
December 2019 to 19 October 2020, in 210 countries across the five
continents available in the ECDC database. Additionally, we have
summarised an up-to-date list of currently available/under trial 23
drugs and vaccines to provide a consolidated reference to those who have
a growing interest in knowing the status of related repurposed drugs and
vaccines and to become acquainted with their mechanism of actions for
preventing the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 into the human host. We
performed an extensive literature review to justify our findings and get
the latest know-how on the COVID-19 pathogenesis. Our findings show that
India is presently in the most critical condition, where the maximum
COVID-19 cases (19.37%) are reported globally in the last 14 days,
which has turned into a major concern. So the government should give
priority to deal with this pandemic. Besides, American and European
countries are also in a risky position, as they harbor 33.31% and
34.52% of total COVID-19 cases in the last 14 days, respectively. The
sudden spurt in the number of COVID-19 cases in Europe due to the
beginning of extensive testing probably reflects the relaxation in
policies for controlling this pandemic. Nevertheless, we should make
predictions on how this virus would evolve further, which might help us
design a ‘magic compound’ that can prevent any likely situation.