Summary

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, and the disease now affects nearly every country and region. Caused by SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 continues nearly 18 months later to present significant challenges to health systems and public health in both hemispheres, as well as the economies of every country. The morbidity and mortality of the infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 has been significant, and various waves of disease outbreaks initially overwhelmed many hospitals and clinics and continue to do so in many countries. This influences everyone, and public health countermeasures have been dramatic in terms of their impact on employment, social systems, and mental health. This entry collection aims to gather diverse fields about COVID-19, including in epidemiology, public health, medicine, genetics, systems biology, informatics, data science, engineering, sociology, anthropology, nursing, environmental studies, statistics, and psychology.

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Entries
Topic Review
Immunology of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children
Immune responses following severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in children are still under investigation. Even though coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is usually mild in the pediatric population, some children exhibit severe clinical manifestations, require hospitalization, or develop the most severe condition: a multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The activated innate, humoral and T-cell-mediated immunological pathways that lead certain pediatric populations to present with MIS-C or remain asymptomatic after SARS-CoV-2 infection are yet to be established. This entry focuses on the immunological aspects of MIS-C with respect to innate, humoral, and cellular immunity. In addition, presents the role of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein as a superantigen in the pathophysiological mechanisms, discusses the great heterogeneity among the immunological studies in the pediatric population, and highlights possible reasons why some children with a certain genetic background present with MIS-C.
  • 362
  • 31 Mar 2023
Topic Review
MicroRNA Let-7 in the Immunopathology of COVID-19
COVID-19 has presented itself as a challenging task to medical teams and researchers throughout the world, since the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 started in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There are still new variants emerging, and the knowledge about the mechanisms used by the virus to infect cells and perpetuate itself are still not well understood. The scientific community is still trying to catch up with the velocity of new variants and, consequently, the new physiological pathways that appear along with it. It is known that the new coronavirus plays a role in changing many molecular pathways to take control of the infected cells. Many of these pathways are related to control genomic expression of certain genes by epigenetic ways, allowing the virus to modulate immune responses and cytokines production. The let-7 family of microRNAs, for instance, are known to promote increased viral fusion in the target cell through a mechanism involving the transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2). It was also demonstrated they are able to increase the inflammatory activity through the NF-κB/IL-6/let-7/LIN-28 axis. 
  • 301
  • 30 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Immunology in the Acute Phase of COVID-19
COVID-19 is a viral disease that has caused millions of deaths around the world since 2020. Many strategies have been developed to manage patients in critical conditions; comprehension of the immune system is a key factor in viral clearance, tissue repairment, and adaptive immunity stimulus. Participation of immunity has been identified as a major factor, along with biomarkers, prediction of clinical outcomes, and antibody production after infection. Immune cells have been proposed not only as a hallmark of severity, but also as a predictor of clinical outcomes, while dynamics of inflammatory molecules can also induce worse consequences for acute patients.
  • 342
  • 29 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Deep Learning in COVID-19
Various deep-learning (DL) methods that utilize a combination of omics data and imaging data have been applied to the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment options of clinical COVID-19 patients. Even with the emerging deep-learning methods, human intervention is still essential in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 patients.
  • 397
  • 06 Apr 2023
Topic Review
Effects of Temperature/Water Types on Coronavirus Decay
The analysis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) gene copy numbers in wastewater samples can provide quantitative information on Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) cases within a sewer catchment. However, many wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) studies have neglected virus decay during the wastewater transportation process in sewers while back-calculating COVID-19 prevalence. Among various sewer condition parameters, wastewater temperature and dilution by fresh/saltwater infiltration may result in a significant change to the virus decay, in terms of both infectivity and Ribonucleic Acid (RNA). 
  • 356
  • 22 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Methods for Supervised Learning in Diagnosis of COVID-19
The methods for supervised learning in diagnosis of COVID-19 refer to the samples used for model training being labeled. The label information is fully utilized to guide network model training. The advantage is that the model accuracy can be effectively improved by learning a large amount of label information and the model is easy to evaluate. The current state of deep learning for COVID-19 classification and segmentation tasks from aspects of supervised learning is summarized, including summarizing the application of VGG, ResNet, DenseNet and lightweight networks to the classification task of COVID-19, and summarizing the application of the attention mechanism, multiscale mechanism, residual connectivity mechanism, and dense connectivity mechanism to the segmentation task of COVID-19.
  • 380
  • 22 Mar 2023
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Telemental Health and Diverse Populations amid COVID-19
Telemental health is defined as the delivery of psychological and mental health services via telecommunication technologies, including telephone-delivered therapy, videoconferencing, and internet-delivered programs. Research indicates that telemental health services are as effective as in-person services, and a dramatic increase in the use of telemental health has been observed during COVID-19. However, there are still persistent challenges and concerns about mental health providers’ competencies, clients’ data privacy, and legal and regulatory issues during this pandemic. Additionally, disparities in the use of telemental health services with diverse populations, based on factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language, and culture, have been identified during this pandemic.
  • 484
  • 29 Mar 2023
Topic Review
New-Onset Liver Injuries Due to COVID-19
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) impacted the world and caused the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The clinical manifestations of the virus can vary from patient to patient, depending on their respective immune system and comorbidities. SARS-CoV-2 can affect patients through two mechanisms: directly by targeting specific receptors or by systemic mechanisms.
  • 348
  • 17 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Oncogenic Potential of SARS-CoV-2
The relationship between viral infections and the risk of developing cancer is well known. Multiple mechanisms participate in and determine this process. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has resulted in the deaths of millions of people worldwide.
  • 564
  • 14 Mar 2023
Topic Review
Plant Produced Biopharmaceuticals against SARS-CoV-2
SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped RNA virus with a single-stranded, positive-sense genome of ~29.9 kB in size. The virus consists of four major structural proteins, named spike (S), nucleocapsid (N), envelope (E), and membrane proteins (M). The S protein which is present as a crown-like spike on the outer surface of the virus plays a major role in viral entry into mammalian cells. Specifically, the virus uses the receptor binding domain (RBD) on the S protein to interact with human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor as a critical initial step to enter target cells. Plants have provided a promising production platform for both bioactive chemical compounds (small molecules) and recombinant therapeutics (big molecules). Plants naturally produce a diverse range of bioactive compounds as secondary metabolites, such as alkaloids, terpenoids/terpenes and polyphenols, which are a rich source of countless antiviral compounds. Plants can also be genetically engineered to produce valuable recombinant therapeutics. This molecular farming in plants has an unprecedented opportunity for developing vaccines, antibodies, and other biologics for pandemic diseases because of its potential advantages, such as low cost, safety, and high production volume. 
  • 751
  • 10 Mar 2023
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