COVID-19’s Social and Economic Impact on Health Care Professionals in India

Abstract

Novel Corona Virus or COVID 19 is from the family Coronaviridae, known to mankind since 1962 when it was first isolated from a patient of a respiratory illness. These are pleomorphic viruses containing varying size peplomers (80- 160nM). They have very high rates of mutation due to constantly developing transcription errors & RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) jumps. These viruses are zoonotic pathogens affecting mostly animals including cattle, dogs, cats & bats. However these animal viruses can spread to humans causing pandemics like SARS & COVID19. They can cause wide range of infections from asymptomatic stage to cases requiring management at intensive care units. The first notable disease caused by Coronaviridae viruses was severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China in 2002- 2003. After a decade there was an outbreak in Middle East countries causing thousands of deaths and causative CoV was named as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The present corona virus pandemic, which erupted in Dec 2019 from Wuhan sea food market and was later labelled as 2019 novel corona virus (nCOVID 19) by world health organisation, is posing as a major healthcare challenge across the globe. It is rapidly spreading across the globe taking millions of lives and causing chaos. It has severely jeopardized the world economy causing global recession.