Category: COVID-19

Here are my blog posts where I describe the biology and public health of infectious and chronic diseases!

The rise of SARS-CoV-2 variants, how are they generated?

Ever since WHO declared the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic on March 2020, the pandemic is continuing to devastate the world with high numbers of cases and deaths and continual cycles of lockdowns and re-openings. The COVID-19 pandemic will continue well into the future as COVID-19 vaccines slowly trickle to low- and middle-income countries to fully immunise the global population against COVID-19. 

Like all bacteria and viruses, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the virus that causes COVID-19 infection, can mutate. These mutations can confer new properties to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, making them more capable in spreading to other people and causing severe disease and death. With uncontrolled, widespread infection of the virus during the pandemic, the virus can mutate at a faster rate, producing a series of variants that are different from the Wuhan strain that emerged in December 2020. In this blog post, I will explain in detail what SARS-CoV-2 variants are and how they arise. Following this, I will describe the various mutations that are present in SARS-CoV-2 variants and explain how they contribute to enhanced virus transmission and infection severity. 

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COVID-19 vaccines: how do they work?

Elderly woman getting vaccinated.

The COVID-19 pandemic is still continuing around the world, with many cities and countries having to re-implement lockdowns as they enter their second waves of infection. Scientific research on COVID-19 is continuing at a frantic pace to develop vaccines that will eliminate COVID-19 and stop the cycle of lockdowns. Many countries, including Australia and Canada, have secured COVID-19 vaccines to distribute to their populations pending successful clinical trials and regulatory approval. Although all COVID-19 vaccines aim to stimulate an immune response and memory against the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the virus that causes COVID-19), they vary in their composition with different vaccine types having distinct advantages and disadvantages. In this blog post, I will explain how vaccines work in protecting the person against COVID-19. I will then discuss the vaccine types being developed to immunize people against COVID-19 and outline the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

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An infographic on chronic diseases and COVID-19

Coming off from the previous poster/infographic detailing the consequences of COVID-19 infection in different body systems, I decided to design a smaller infographic describing the link between chronic diseases (also known as non-communicable diseases or NCDs) and severe and fatal COVID-19 infection. This infographic was inspired by an article by Sandro Demaio and Edwin Kwong where they expressed the need for the world to respond to the “…long overlooked NCD pandemic…”. Being passionate about both infectious and chronic diseases and knowing the link between the two, I decided to create an infographic more clearly describing the link.

Here, I have put the statistics on various chronic diseases on different medical devices (e.g., the body scales for obesity, a blood pressure monitor for hypertension…). These statistics are sourced from the 2017-18 National Health Survey conducted by the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics). This is followed by a paragraph stating how much a particular chronic disease increases the risk of severe or fatal COVID-19 infection. These are based on odds ratios derived from various systematic reviews, where they compile individual clinical studies (up to mid-April 2020) to generate more precise results. These odds ratios are anticipated to become more accurate as more studies are published in the area.

Given the oft-neglected chronic disease pandemic which will only become increasingly common, it is time that we act on not only the re-emergence of new and existing infectious diseases but also tackle the rising prevalence of chronic diseases mostly fuelled by lifestyle choices. Tackling these dual problems will ensure that people can live a healthy life so that they can perform at their best and protect themselves against infectious disease and ill-health.

An infographic on the devastating consequences of COVID-19 in the human body

Since COVID-19 was thrust into the spotlight at the beginning of the year, I have been fascinated by the biology and public health response behind this infection. COVID-19 is very similar to what I worked on in my PhD project (focusing mainly on inflammation and influenza). In fact, I talked about the similarities and differences between SARS-CoV-2 and seasonal influenza in a previous blog post. What I did not realise is how widespread COVID-19 infection can devastate the human body compared to seasonal influenza which mainly infects the lungs. This is what I highlight in my first infographic.

Admittedly, the infographic is quite text heavy and I had to use A3 size to fit everything which made it more like a poster than an infographic. But this infographic should hopefully summarise the consequences of COVID-19 infection around the body and how they arise. This infographic is suitable not just to science-minded people that want to know more about the biology behind COVID-19 but also people still skeptical of the severity of COVID-19 infection. Hence, as long as you don’t modify the infographic, feel free to distribute it to other people.

Infographic detailing the complications of COVID-19 in the human body.
Infographic on the devastating consequences of COVID-19 infection in the human body.

Identifying the source of the Melbourne COVID-19 outbreak by measuring case numbers

In the last blog post, I talked about how low English literacy and high rates of no internet connection were found in the 10 COVID-19 hotspots across Melbourne and how this could hamper the government’s efforts to communicate public health measures to migrant and disadvantaged communities. Since then, the Victorian government has announced Stage three lockdowns across all of metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire in an effort to contain the outbreak. This has emerged as a result of many clusters popping up across all of Melbourne. In this blog post, I look into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne by looking at the sources of infection in Victoria and NSW. I argue that it is not the sole fault of Victorians for failing to adhere to social distancing measures. Rather, it is failures in the Victorian government’s response to COVID-19 before and during the outbreak combined with the perpetuating local transmission among families that has started the COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne.

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