AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORY OF CORONAVIRUSES IN OUR WORLD
Rohin Buch
Health Head
Coronavirus, a common name for COVID-19, is actually the singular form of a category of viruses that have lived inside the organisms of this planet for centuries. The first human coronaviruses, 229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1, were discovered in the 1960s. Therefore, contrary to popular belief and social media, even though the novel coronavirus is one we as humans have never seen before, coronaviruses are not new to humans. To understand the coronaviruses as a category further we have to examine the two other coronavirus-related outbreaks in history.
The first coronavirus-related outbreak was the 2002-2004 worldwide SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, outbreak. The patient zero, or first recorded case, of SARS, was a man working in the Shunde district of Foshan district, Guandong Province, China. When he was brought into the hospital, he passed the highly contagious disease to healthcare workers and patients alike.
The unique aspect of the SARS virus’ transmissibility, its ability/ likelihood to spread, was the phenomenon of “super-spreaders.” These were people who were responsible for the immediate transfer of SARS to a small number of initial patients who in turn infected more people and so on. The first known super-spreader of SARS was Zhou Zuofen, a fishmonger, who upon checking into Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital in Guangzhou, China, infected 30 people. After the super-spreader had infected the large number in the hospital, one of the doctors there, Liu Jianlun, who even after being symptomatic, decided to travel to Hong Kong, became the index (first) patient in Hong Kong.
From there, Jianlun became the next super-spreader, who, after checking in at the Metropole Hotel in the city, infected many people on the 9th floor of the hotel. These people in turn brought it back to their home countries of Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, and more. This global spread of SARS can be considered as one of the fastest spreads of a virus-caused disease (see SARS spread map). It is also important to note the role of the Chinese government in the SARS epidemic. At the beginning of the outbreak, the Chinese central government refused to comment on the epidemic and kept its numbers exactly the same for five to six months before changing them to reflect the current total, this only being upon the force of the WHO. It is interesting to note that the nonchalant attitude of the Chinese government, or rather the secretive façade it put on during the SARS era, is eerily similar to what it did at the beginnings of the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak. Before discussing the novel coronavirus, though, it is imperative to recognize MERS outbreaks throughout the last 10 years.
The first known MERS outbreak, MERS being short for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, was in 2012 in… you guessed it … the Middle East—to which MERS lends its name.
During the time of the 2012 outbreak, this coronavirus-related disease was of concern to many religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and outside, because of the susceptibility of many hajjis, or people who partook in the Hajj, the sacred Muslim pilgrimage, to the virus (see the image of the Hajj).
The interesting cultural note in the 2012 MERS outbreak was the large numbers of men falling ill while the number of ill women remained low. This is because, in many of the conservative Islamic countries of the Middle East, and elsewhere, women are bound by their religion and scripture, the Qur’an, to cover their mouths and noses in the traditional burqa, thus reducing the number of entry points for the virus into their bodies. This gender disparity paired with the widespread transmission of MERS, caused by the MERS-CoV, or MERS-coronavirus, makes it an interesting epidemic to study.
One thing that differentiates MERS from SARS, however, is that MERS was never completely eradicated and is still being tracked to this day by the CDC and WHO. This failure to eradicate in the 2012 outbreak led to another outbreak in 2015 all the way in South Korea (see 2015 MERS in South Korea graph), a place not near the Middle East by any means. This outbreak was triggered by the return home of a South Korean man who had visited many Middle Eastern countries. By July of that year, 32 people had died, 182 cases were confirmed, and more than 3800 people were under quarantine. MERS subsequently died down in South Korea. But not having been eradicated, MERS flared up again in 2018 causing another small-scale worldwide outbreak, with a surge in MERS patients throughout the world.
Now that the two coronavirus-related outbreaks have been explained, we can move on to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Before explaining further, it is crucial to recognize the source of the novel coronavirus. The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, is caused by the SARS-CoV-2, or SARS-coronavirus 2, showing the true scientific connection between SARS and COVID-19. All this in-depth analysis of SARS and MERS has just gone to strengthen this connection as well as show how COVID-19 is more similar to these two diseases than anyone thought. As well, what it shows is that we need to learn from the mistakes we (the global community) made during SARS and MERS and use them to change the course of the novel coronavirus crisis today!
Works Cited:
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“2018 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Outbreak.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Apr. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome_outbreak.
“About Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 Aug. 2019, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/mers/about/index.html.
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“Coronavirus.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 Feb. 2020, www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html.
“Hajj Could Become Lethal If the Climate Crisis Continues.” Islamic Relief UK, 21 Dec. 2019, www.islamic-relief.org.uk/hajj-could-become-lethal-if-the-climate-crisis-continues/.
“Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome#/media/File:2015_MERS_in_South_Korea.svg.
Nguyen, Trieu, et al. “2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): Paving the Road for Rapid Detection and Point-of-Care Diagnostics.” MDPI, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 14 Mar. 2020, www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/11/3/306/htm.
“SARS.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6 Dec. 2017, www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html.
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