Past, present and future of covid-19 pandemic;review of the pathophysiology and clinical management

Sikandar, M. Z.; Fatima, A.; Shah, S. I. A.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been caused by the worldwide infectious spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Its mechanism of action involves RNA virus implantation into the cell’s cytoplasm and the hijack of transcriptional machinery. The infection primarily afflicts the pulmonary system, resulting in multiple complications including, but not limited to, ground glass opacities seen on imaging. Characteristic features of COVID-19 involve pneumonia, shortness of breath, asthma, nasal congestion, sore throat, fever, fatigue, myalgia and it also encompasses a wide variety of other systemic symptoms. Multiple pharmaceutical agents have been tried as a treatment for COVID-19 but the results are inconsistent. With the intention of stopping person-to-person transmission, health measures such as quarantine and social distancing have been adopted, but the implementation was difficult. After the first wave of the pandemic, the second wave surfaced with a clear resurgence of cases followed by a third wave. The present review summarizes what is known about COVID-19 and explores the factors behind the resurgence.