Three years have passed since the first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although the ...pandemic has slowed down gradually, the situation is not yet stable. Since COVID-19 has spread mainly in developed European and American countries, it is considered to be said a peculiar infectious disease. It has a significant impact on medical systems in developed countries in across the globe. In the past three years, the COVID-19 epidemic has changed gradually, both globally and regionally.
COVID-19 is a newly discovered infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic started at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, China and spread rapidly across the world, ...especially in North and South America or Europe. The number of infected cases in the developed countries in North America and Europe or South America is extremely high, whereas its number in the developing countries of Africa or Southeast Asia is not so high; therefore, the COVID-19 is different from the usual infectious disease outbreaks. This article introduces the epidemiology of COVID-19, comparing with other historical infectious disease outbreaks.
We are still in the early stage of 21st century and the two pandemics Spanish flu and COVID-19 are the presentative pandemics in 20th and 21st centuries, respectively. The Spanish flu pandemic raged ...from 1918 to 1920, just after World War I. It was the first influenza pandemic worldwide; since then, humankind has experienced many such pandemics. Spanish flu is caused by a virus. However, since virology was not well established at that time, the new clinical system was needed to cope with “unknown pathogen”; during the pandemic, high infection rates were recorded, but our predecessors managed to somehow tackle the situation. With respect to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both the virus and its genome were clarified quickly. Nonetheless, it has turned out to be quite an intriguing infectious disease, with the high rates in developed countries, such as the US and those in Europe, which have aging societies, and low rates in developing countries such as those in Africa, where the population is largely young. Here, I compared and discuss the two pandemics, COVID-19 and Spanish flu.
The Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) is a Japanese government program that promotes international joint research. The program is structured as a ...collaboration between the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The program includes various fields, such as Environment and Energy, Bioresources, Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, and Infectious Disease Control, and a total 52 projects were currently in progress as of May, 2018.
It is expected that the promotion of international joint research under this program will enable Japanese research institutions to conduct research more effectively in fields and having targets that make it advantageous to do that research in developing countries, including countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa.
Recently, SATREPS projects in the field of Infectious Disease have been but under the control of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED). Although adult maladies, such as malignant tumors, heart disease, and cerebral apoplexy, are major causes of death in the developed countries including Japan, infectious diseases are still responsible for the high mortality rates in developing countries. Therefore, Infectious Disease Control is the important field of SATREPS.
Infectious Disease Control projects are progressing in several countries, including Kenya, Zambia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Brazil, and various infectious diseases and pathogens have been targeted.
In this special issue on Infectious Disease Control, the following reports from three projects have been selected: “The JICA-AMED SATREPS Project to Control Outbreaks of Yellow Fever and Rift Valley Fever in Kenya” by Nagasaki University, “Comprehensive Etiological and Epidemiological Study on Acute Respiratory Infections in Children in the Philippines” by Tohoku University, and “International Joint Research on Antifungal Resistant Fungi in Brazil” by Chiba University. These projects include viral, bacterial, and fungal infections.
If they become available, further supplementary reports from other projects in this field will be published in a future issue.
Vibrio parahaemolyticus was discovered by Tsunesaburo Fujino after a shirasu food poisoning outbreak in 1950, but at that time the isolate was named Pasteurella parahaemolytica, not Vibrio. Although ...the isolate resembled Vibrio, some properties did not correspond with those of Vibrio. For example, the curved cell form of the cell was one of the important taxonomical indicators of the genus, but the isolate was straight in form. After 5 years, Iwao Takikawa isolated a similar bacterium from a food poisoning case and found the halophilic property of the isolate. He named the isolate Pseudomonas enteritis. In 1960, due to the progress of taxonomy, various scientific indices were adjusted, and Davis and Parks defined the taxonomical position of the genus Vibrio, and Fujino et al. and Sakazaki et al. reexamined the above isolates and confirmed that those were the same species in the genus Vibrio and proposed the new scientific name Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Last year was the 60th year since the discovery of the bacterium, and the discoverer was the first president of our organization, the Society for Antibacterial and Antifungal Agents, Japan. Some recollections including the correlation between the Kanagawa phenomenon and human pathogenicity, the major pathogenic factor TDH (thermostable direct hemolysin) and its related hemolysin (TRH: TDH related hemolysin) are also summarized.
Three years have passed since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China. The pandemic rapidly spread worldwide, especially through Europe and the Americas.
The
Journal of ...Disaster Research
(JDR) edited its “Special Issue on COVID-19 and Historical Pandemics, Part 1 and Part 2” at the end of 2020 and 2021, and their electronic versions were published in January 2021 (JDR Vol.16, No.1, pp. 1-117) and January 2022 (JDR Vol.17, No.1, pp. 1-158), respectively.
However, the pandemic is still continued and not yet eradicated. The cumulative number of cases of COVID-19 worldwide, as released in the World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Update was 260 million as of December 2021. We therefore planned for the publication of this Special Issue Part 3 and called for papers.
This Special Issue Part 3 includes nine manuscripts, which deal from various fields related to COVID-19, such as including vaccine rollout program, the role of social media, problems in school education, therapeutic agents, virology, and general epidemiology. This suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is a complicated disaster.
In December 2022, the global number of cumulative cases have increased to 940 million, almost one-tenth of the world’s population, although this number includes many asymptomatic infections. On the contrary, the number of new COVID-19 cases has slowed of mildness in the American and European countries in the year 2022, yet there has been a conspicuous increase in newly reported cases in Asia, especially in the Republic of Korea and Japan. Although the cases from African countries have still continued to report fewer numbers of cases than the number from other areas, However, there is still some possibility of that this is because of a lower number of medicinal tests, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, are given in African countries. If this is the reason, future increases of the medicinal tests in Africa may cause result in undesirable increases of in the number of cases therein African counties.
We are hopeful that the COVID-19 pandemic will be eradicated in the next year, consequently no necessary for the rendering a Special Issue Part 4.
A total of 387 retail meat, seafood and milk powder samples were collected from nine cities in northern China in 2005 and screened for the presence of
Salmonella.
Salmonella strains isolated were ...subjected to serotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing.
Salmonella was isolated from 81 (20.9%, 81/387) samples and classified into 23 serotypes. The isolates were frequently resistant to sulfamethoxazole (86.4%), sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (48.1%), nalidixic acid (30.9%), tetracycline (19.8%), carboxybenzylpenicillin (17.3%), amoxicillin (17.3%) and ampicillin (16.0%). The multiple resistance (resistance to ≥
3 antibiotics) was found in 29.6% (n
=
24) isolates. Additionally, 4 isolates from chicken displayed the ACSSuTNx profile, resistant to ampicillin, chloramphenicol, streptomycin, sulfonamide, tetracycline and nalidixic acid, in particular, strain HBS084 showing the resistance to as many as 20 antibiotics.
Salmonella from chicken showed the higher frequency of antimicrobial resistance. Our findings indicate that in northern China food products of animal origin can be a source of exposure for consumers to multiresistant
Salmonella strains.
COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China, 2 years ago, became a pandemic, that continues to this day.
The Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) edited a special issue, “Special Issue on COVID-19 and ...Historical Pandemics” at the end of 2020 and an electronic version of the issue was published in January 2021 (JDR Vol.16, No.1, pp. 1-117).
Even though one year has passed, life has not yet returned to normal due to the continued spread of COVID-19. Although the percentage of the general public that has been vaccinated continues to increase and various drugs and treatments have been developed, the number of COVID-19 cases also continues to increase. A huge number of COVID-19 cases have been reported, especially in Europe and the Americas.
Accordingly, we planned to publish Special Issue Part 2 and called for papers.
This Special Issue Part 2 includes 18 manuscripts, which deal with general epidemiology, effects on socioeconomic or educational areas, and clinical medicine, including vaccines and medical treatments.
The virus spike protein plays an important role in its intrusion into human cells and the onset of COVID-19 infection. Although SARS-CoV-2 (the pathogenic virus of COVID-19) originated in Wuhan, China, various variant strains with mutation in gene coding in the spike protein have appeared in multiple countries. The WHO classifies these variants into the categories of VOC (variant of concern), VOI (variant of interest), or VUM (variant under monitoring).
The definitions of VOC and VOI are as follows. VOC: “A SARS-CoV-2 variant that meets the definition of a VOI and, through a comparative assessment, has been demonstrated to be associated with one or more changes in the degree of global public health significance.” VOI: “Increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology, increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation, or decrease in effectiveness of public health and social measures or available diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.”
The WHO uses Greek letters designating the variants. Accordingly as they have appeared, variants have been designated as alpha (α: the UK variant), beta (β: the South Africa variant), and delta (δ: the Indian variant).
After the deadline for the manuscript of this special issue, a new variant, omicron (
o
) originated in South Africa and Botswana, and it immediately began spreading worldwide. Unfortunately, it was impossible to include the manuscript on the omicron variant in this Special Issue Part 2, as the deadline had already passed.
As COVID-19 continues to spread, the JDR will plan to edit Part 3 of this COVID-19 special issue.
In the developed countries including Japan, malignant tumor (cancer), heart disease and cerebral apoplexy are major causes of death, but infectious diseases still responsible for high mortality in ...the developing countries, especially for children less than 5 years of age. World Health Statistics published byWHO indicates a high percentage of mortality from infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, diarrhea, measles, malaria and pneumonia in children of South and Southeast Asian and African countries (World Health Statistics 2014,World Health Organization). Many of these infectious diseases have the potential for borderless transmission and invasion to Japan.
Given this situation, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) introduced Phase I of a program “Founding Research Centers for Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases,” running from fiscal 2005 to 2009 and involving 8 Japanese universities and 2 Japanese research centers. The program was established to:
1) Create of a domestic research structure to promote the accumulation of fundamental knowledge about infectious diseases,
2) Set up 13 overseas research collaboration centers in 8 countries at high risk of emerging and reemerging infections, Japanese researchers are stationed at these centers, where they conduct research in partnership with overseas instructors,
3) Develop a network among domestic and overseas research centers,
4) Develop human resources.
The program, supervised by MEXT, and managed by the RIKEN Center of the Research Network for Infectious Diseases (Riken CRNID). Dr. Yoshiyuki Nagai, Program Director (PD), heads CRNID and is organizing the program.
Phase II of the program was set up as the Japan Initiative for the Global Research Network on Infectious Diseases (J-GRID) and was established for fiscal 2010-2014.
Participating universities, institutes and countries in J-GRID are as follows:
Hokkaido University : Zambia
Tohoku University : Philippines
The University of Tokyo : China
Tokyo Medical and Dental University : Ghana
Osaka University : Thailand
Kobe University : Indonesia
Okayama University : India
Nagasaki University : Vietnam
Kenya (Associate*)
Niigata University : Myanmar (Associate*)
National Center for Global Health and Medicine : Vietnam
National Institute of Animal Health : Thailand
*Two associate members were involved in 2011.
Each university and institute set up its collaborative research center in a country and conducts research on infectious diseases, especially typical regional diseases. The program’s outcome of each collaborative center is announced by the publication of various research papers or outreach programs, such as open lectures for citizens, and so on. The Asian-African Research Forum (AARF) on Infectious Disease organized by J-GRID is dedicated to reporting and discussing the research results of the collaborative research centers.
Details and activities of J-GRID can be seen at http://www.crnid.riken.jp/jgrid/. The Figs. 1 and 2 show examples of the home page indicating the countries and the collaborative research institutes involved.
J-GRID publishes the magazine entitled “Monthly CRNID,” which is available by mail upon request to “https://krs.bz/crnid/m?f=2&m=1110&t=8cdk&v=076691d2.” This publication contains various topical information on infectious diseases, such as research papers, newly announced news from WHO, overseas trip news, domestic infections, new drug developments, explanations, events, etc.
Phase II will terminate on March 2015 (the end of FY 2014), and Phase III will begin in April 2015 at the start of the new FY.
This special issue on J-GRID is being edited on the occasion of the final year of Phase II. The outlines of J-GRID and those of all the collaborative research centers are reviewed by Dr. Nagai, PD of CRNID, and the representatives of each respective collaborative center in this issue.
Finally, I extend my sincere thanks to all authors and reviewers involved in this special issue.
COVID-2019 was first identified in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, and from there it spread worldwide. Due to this worldwide distribution of COVID-19 cases, the WHO declared a COVID-19 pandemic. ...The pathogen of COVID-19, a novel corona virus, resembles SARS-CoV, the pathogen of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome, a pandemic in 2003), so the International Committee on Taxonomy Virology named it SARS-CoV-2. However, COVID-19 is a different disease from SARS, and should be controlled to the extent possible with the effective vaccines and therapeutic medicines.
Although one year has passed since the first appearance of the disease, the number of COVID-19 cases continues to increase, and the pandemic is now in its third large wave. It is thought that it will be difficult to eradicate the disease completely, because SARS-CoV-2 is possible to invade and live in various host animals in addition to humans.
During this pandemic, the JDR has put together the special issue “COVID-19 and Historical Pandemics.” Because there have been many pandemics that have transformed society in various ways, the special issue includes historical pandemics in addition to COVID-19. The manuscripts in this issue include various subjects related to COVID-19, including methods of analyzing the pandemic, suggestions for countermeasures against it, methods of prevention and epidemiological reviews, among others.
The WHO has released a large volume of pandemic information on an ongoing basis, including its “COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update.” In the weekly edition of December 27, it reported the cumulative number of cases and percentages of the global total from around the world: the Americas 34,403,371 (43%), Europe 25,271 (31%), Africa 1,831,227 (2%), and the Western Pacific 1.059,751 (1%). It is notable that 74% of cumulative global total number of cases have been reported in the Americas and Europe, where most developed countries are included, whereas the numbers in Africa, which includes many developing countries, and the Western Pacific region, which includes Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia in addition to Japan and China, are 2% and 1%, respectively. This indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic is a different from previous epidemics caused by other infectious diseases.
As the pandemic spreads, the JDR plans to edit Part 2 of this COVID-19 special issue.