articles on covid-19 and it's impact on humanity in'150 words
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The world is enveloped in a global health emergency that is exacting enormous medical and economic tolls upon humanity. The SARS-CoV-2 that has caused the current COVID-19 pandemic is thought to have originated in bats and, via an intermediary such as the pangolin, to have found its way from a “wet market” where live wildlife species were being sold for human consumption in Wuhan, China, to one or more humans at that location [1]. Within months, this highly infectious virus spread throughout China and around the world, currently involving at least 185 countries and territories, with a trail of incredible damage in its wake [2]. The medical community finds itself on the front lines throughout the world dealing with the immediate human health consequences of this rapidly evolving crisis and trying to develop therapies and vaccines, as countries and their leaders attempt to mitigate the overwhelming societal and economic devastations that are unfolding.
From a neuropsychiatric perspective, there are obvious signs of global psychological distress related to social isolation and fears of illness, death, and countless uncertainties about the future [3]. Less attention has been given to neurological manifestations including headache, anosmia, ageusia, ataxia, paresthesia, ischemic stroke, seizures, and various encephalopathies, collectively occurring in up to nearly 40% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in early series. Encephalopathies have been more likely to occur in severely ill patients and have included at least one case of documented viral encephalitis with SARS-CoV-2 in the cerebrospinal fluid [4].
Past respiratory viral pandemics have been associated with other delayed neurological sequelae, including acute inflammatory polyradiculopathy, peripheral neuropathy, myopathy, brainstem encephalitis, and Parkinsonism, the latter of which was prominently associated with the so-called Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 [5]. Given the immense global burden of COVID-19, it is likely that the long-term neuropsychiatric complications will be substantial and it will be important for the medical community to prospectively monitor patients to establish the nature and extent of such morbidities while also dealing with the acute manifestations of this illness that are unfolding each day in emergency rooms throughout the world