• Olaf Müller, Florian Neuhann, and Oliver Razum.
• Heidelberg Institut für Global Health.
• Dtsch. Med. Wochenschr. 2020 May 1; 145 (10): 670-674.

AbstractThe Coronavirus Disease Pandemic 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), started in December 2019 in China. SARS-CoV-2 is easily transmitted by droplet infection. After an incubation period of 1-14 days, COVID-19 shows a mild course in 80 % of observed cases and a severe course in 20 %, with a lethality rate of 0.3-5.8 %. Elderly people and people with underlying diseases have a higher risk of severe courses with mandatory ventilation. So far there are neither effective drugs nor vaccinations available, so only public health interventions such as physical distancing and hygiene measures on the one hand and targeted testing followed by isolation and quarantine measures on the other hand are available. China has shown that maximum use of these measures can control the epidemic. The further course and also the consequences for the global economy cannot be clearly predicted at present.© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

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