Spread of COVID-19 and Its Main Modes of Transmission

Spread of COVID-19 and Its Main Modes of Transmission

Soraia El Baz, Ahmed Draoui, Mohamed Echchakery, Natalia Lopez-Gonzalez del Rey, Karima Chgoura
Copyright: © 2022 |Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-8225-1.ch005
OnDemand:
(Individual Chapters)
Available
$33.75
List Price: $37.50
Current Special Offers
10% Discount:-$3.75
TOTAL SAVINGS: $3.75

Abstract

The coronaviruses group can affect mammals, including humans, causing generally mild infectious disorders, sporadically leading to severe outbreak clusters, such as those generated by SARS-CoV in 2003 and by MERS-CoV in 2012 and in 2015. The current coronavirus outbreak started December 29th, 2019 in Wuhan (Republic of China) and has progressively expanded to various parts of the world. A human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 occurs directly through individuals showing symptoms. But, recent researches support the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 transmission from persons who are asymptomatic. Indirect transmission occurs via touching infected surfaces or through inhalation of small, exhaled virus in respiratory droplets. To effectively fight the spread of COVID-19, it is vital to understand the different factors that promote superspreading of COVID-19. So, the aim of this chapter is to describe the invasion of SARS-CoV-2 in the human body and the different modes of transmission (directly and indirectly).
Chapter Preview
Top

Pathophysiology And Mechanism Of Entry Of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus

Coronaviruses are enveloped RNA viruses first described in 1968 (Kenny & Mallon, 2021), its diameter is about 65-125 nm with a positive-sense ranging in size from 27 to nearly 32 kb in length, single-stranded RNA and viral particles resembling to the solar corona from which the name derives (Carlos et al., 2020). Structurally, SARS-CoV-2 has four main structural proteins including (fig.1): (i) spike (S) glycoprotein interacts with the receptor of the target cells favoring the virus penetration into them, (ii) small envelope (E) glycoprotein and membrane (M) glycoprotein form the envelope of the virus, (iii) the nucleocapsid (N) protein binds the viral RNA, and also several accessory proteins (Guo et al., 2020; Jiang, Hillyer, & Du, 2020; Platto, Xue, & Carafoli, 2020).

Figure 1.

SARS-CoV-2 structure

978-1-7998-8225-1.ch005.f01

Complete Chapter List

Search this Book:
Reset