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.