BACKGROUND

Wuhan was registered on December 19, 2019 as the epicenter of the emergence of a new virus from the group of coronaviruses that showed the characteristics of interhuman transmission, causing a respiratory disease presenting with fever, dry cough, and often severe pneumonia with ARDS [1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced the pandemic disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 and brought measures in order to interrupt spread of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. Currently, COVID-19 has spread widely around the world, affecting more than 6,343,188 people around the world with more than 376,290 deaths caused by virus [2]. The presence of coronavirus viruses that circulate in nature and cause diseases in humans is not new, but so far these were mainly the types of viruses responsible for seasonal colds. The epidemics caused by viruses from this group SARS 2002-03 and MERS 2012 are still in the relatively fresh memory of most people when they caused great fear, but were soon overcome despite the lack of causal treatment or vaccine, and thanks to strict epidemiological measures. All these infections, since they are caused by viruses from the same group, have a similar clinical picture and ways of transmission, although over time it turned out that they have significant differences. SARS and MERS showed significantly higher mortality, with 8096 cases and 774 deaths in 29 countries from SARS, accounting for 9.6%; and 2,494 MERS patients with 858 deaths in 27 countries, accounting for 34.4% [3]. In all cases, the droplet route of transmission of the infection was dominant, although there was also the fecal route, so close contact was necessary in order to achieve interhuman transmission. Although mortality in SARS and MERS was far higher, SARS-CoV-2 has a significantly higher number of deaths in proportion to the higher number of patients [4].
The conversion enzyme Angiotensin 2, found in the lower respiratory tract in humans, is a target site for COVID 19 virus binding, so it is not surprising that respiratory symptomatology is dominant, even with the development of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), which is life-threatening clinical condition. Overall incubation period was approximately 5 days, and during this period patient is also infective [5]. The course of the disease in patients with severe clinical picture is such that on average in 8-20 days ARDS develops with the need for mechanical ventilation, while the findings on MSCT lungs are most pronounced after 10 days and sometimes in serologically negative patients the characteristic findings on the lungs are sufficient to make a diagnosis [1] [6] [7]. The beginning of the epidemic in Wuhan was covered by the media, but it seems that many European countries did not take the new fact seriously enough and believed that it was a disease no more dangerous than the flu, which is also quite far away. China, with a huge burden of this disease, has taken strong measures to control the spread and improve the curative rate of COVID-19 [3]. Other states, primarily in Europe, introduced epidemiological measures with the aim of preventing the spread of infection, which ranged from closing entire cities and municipalities, introducing a state of emergency with police and military engagement to liberal recommendations on social distance as seen in Sweden.
In this paper, we summarized the epidemiological characteristics, number of cases and number of deaths from COVID-19 taking into account different epidemiological measures [8, 9]. A comprehensive understanding of these measurement effectiveness would improve control the disease. The aim of our study was to compare the efficacy and consequences of proposed epidemiological measures between countries.