COVID-19 and the Tsunami of Information

Rollett, Rebecca; Collins, Michelle; Tamimy, M Sarmad; Perks, A Graeme B; Henley, Mark; Ashford, Robert U.

COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the recently discovered coronavirus, SARS-CoV2. This new virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The number of publications COVID-19 related is exponentially increasing but there are also some retracted papers appearing on PubMed including those retracted from The Lancet Global Health and the New England Journal of Medicine. In a PubMed search for ‘COVID’ there were 1595 articles by the 1(st) April 2020. As of June 30(th), the number of articles has now reached 25913. In this editorial, 4 specific areas of information are looked at but the principles apply to many other areas of medicine. The specifics looked at are PPE for tracheostomy, testing for COVID-19, pregnancy and COVID-19 and surgical expectations during redeployment. We must make no mistake that we are seeing a disease that modern medicine has never encountered before. This article is not aimed at belittling or dismissing any of the advice of the Royal Colleges’ or PHE advice, but it demonstrates the tsunami of information and the ambiguity that surgeons are experiencing throughout the UK right now This is unlikely to be the end of progression regarding health care planning and development for un-encountered viruses(9). In the next few months and beyond there are likely to be adaptions and revisions of more documents advising on various aspects of health care surround COVID-19 management and for possible future viruses not yet seen by the modern world before.