(Daily News Scan - DNS English) Finding Cure for Corona
Corona virus cases are increasing day by day in various parts of the world. The World Health Organization has recently declared the novel corona virus as pandemic. This virus spread has kept people, scientists, researches and doctors on their toes. Scientists around the world are trying to develop a line of treatment and a vaccine for this virus.
In this DNS we will understand why WHO has declared this novel virus as pandemic and how the scientists are looking for cure of this virus.
WHO has declared corona virus as pandemic recently. A pandemic is a measure of the spread of a disease. When a disease spreads to a vast geographical area, covering many countries and continents, with most people having no immunity against it, then the outbreak is termed as pandemic. The word “pandemic comes from the Greek ‘pandemos’, which means everybody”. “Demos mean the population. Pan meaning everyone. So ‘pandemos’ is a concept where there’s a belief that the whole world’s population will be exposed to this infection and probably a proportion of them fall sick. It signifies a higher level of concern than an epidemic. There is no fixed number of cases or death that defines an outbreak becomes a pandemic.
Keeping this spread of the virus on a large scale, scientists around the world are trying to develop a cure for corona virus. It will take months to develop a line of treatment or vaccine against the disease. A global effort is seen to collect and analyze the genetic composition of the corona virus. This will help in developing a vaccine and cure.
Laboratories in various countries have been sharing the genome sequence of the virus on an international platform. Genome sequencing is the process of determining the complete DNA sequence of an organism’s genome at a single time. It is a unique code of genetic material of any organism and determines the characteristic of any organism.
The gene composition of the corona virus is different from that of the influenza virus. Until now, 326 sets of data have been shared. China has till now contributed 120 sequences. The US has shared 43 genome sequences, while the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have contributed 25 each. India has reported two sets of genome sequence. These two are very similar to the original sequences collected from patients in Wuhan. This similarity between the genome sequences was observed as the patient basically from Kerala had returned from Wuhan in China.
India in comparison to other countries like China, Italy, and South Korea has reportedly less cases of positive patients of corona virus. About, 20-30 genome sequences are being shared from different laboratories across the world on an everyday basis. Patients who have been infected with the virus in similar conditions are not show any significant changes in the genome sequences. To understand it better let’s take an example - the positive cases in a group of 40 from Maharashtra, who visited Dubai last month, are likely to have similar genome sequences, and therefore, one or two representative sequencing could be enough from the group.
Several efforts are going on to develop drugs, but scientists are still not sure whether it could come immediately. Presently, the drugs are being repurposed. This means, old drugs for similar diseases are being checked for their efficacy against COVID-19. If these drugs work, they will require clinical trials, and then can be made widely available for people.
We will have to wait for quite some time for the drugs of corona virus to be made.
