Debunking Myths about COVID-19, Paranoiac Misconceptions, Recent Developments and its Current Stance

Khalid, Zumama; Yousaf, Muhammad; Khan, Abeedha Tu-Allah; Shakoori, Farah Rauf; Munir, Muhammad; Shakoori, Abdul Rauf

doi:10.17582/journal.pjz/20200608144416

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…A large proportion (~80%) of CoVID-19 infected patients showed only moderate symptoms which led to a staggering rate increase in the global spread of the infection. The acute respiratory distress syndrome, manifested in ~20% of CoVID-19 patients, causing substantial case fatality rates especially in elderly and frail people with co-morbidities [ 1 , 2 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Scalable Topical Vectored Vaccine Candidate against SARS-CoV-2

Rohaim

Munir

2020

Vaccines

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The severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused an ongoing unprecedented global public health crises of coronavirus disease in 2019 (CoVID-19). The precipitously increased death rates, its impact on livelihood and trembling economies warrant the urgent development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine which would be safe, efficacious and scalable. Owing to unavailability of the vaccine, we propose a de novo synthesized avian orthoavulavirus 1 (AOaV-1)-based topical respiratory vaccine candidate against CoVID-19. Avirulent strain of AOaV-1 was engineered to express full length spike (S) glycoprotein which is highly neutralizing and a major protective antigen of the SARS-CoV-2. Broad-scale in vitro characterization of a recombinant vaccine candidate demonstrated efficient co-expression of the hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) of AOaV-1 and S protein of SARS-CoV-2, and comparable replication kinetics were observed in a cell culture model. The recombinant vaccine candidate virus actively replicated and spread within cells independently of exogenous trypsin. Interestingly, incorporation of S protein of SARS-CoV-2 into the recombinant AOaV-1 particles attributed the sensitivity to anti-SARS-CoV-2 antiserum and more prominently to anti-AOaV-1 antiserum. Finally, our results demonstrated that the recombinant vaccine vector stably expressed S protein after multiple propagations in chicken embryonated eggs, and this expression did not significantly impact the in vitro growth characteristics of the recombinant. Taken together, the presented respiratory vaccine candidate is highly attenuated in primates per se, safe and lacking pre-existing immunity in human, and carries the potential for accelerated vaccine development against CoVID-19 for clinical studies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Scalable Topical Vectored Vaccine Candidate against SARS-CoV-2

Rohaim

Munir

2020

Vaccines

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“…Moreover, though it is established that COVID-19 is spill over infection and not a human made (laboratory generated) output [35][36][37], however, another common misconception is that this virus is human created biological weapons for international politics [38]. Similar findings were reported across the world, including America [9,39], Saudi Arabia [31] Nigeria [33,40], Nepal [7], Ghana [41], Uganda [42] and Pakistan [43].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…However, educated people have the capacity to differentiate between the right and wrong. This enables them to recived the correct information from the mass and social media and avoid incorrect information which contribute to the lowering misconceptions [43,46]. Another root of lower misconception about the COVID-19 among the educated people is access to the advanced medical treatment facilities (43).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community’s misconception about COVID-19 and its associated factors: Evidence from a cross-sectional study in Bangladesh

Bakebillah

et al. 2021

Preprint

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IntroductionMisconception about COVID-19 has been spread out broadly that the World Health Organization declared it as a major challenge in the fight against the disease. This study aimed to assess common misconceptions about COVID-19 among the rural people of Bangladesh and its associated socio-demographic and media related factors.MethodsData were collected from 210 respondents selected from three unions of Satkhira District, Bangladesh.The dependent variable was misconception about COVID-19 (Yes, No) which was generated based on the respondents’ responses to six questions on common misconceptions of COVID-19. Explanatory variables were respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics, mass media and social media use habits. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the characteristics of the respondents. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used to determine the factors associated with misconception about COVID-19.ResultsMisconceptions about COVID-19 were found among more than half of the total respondents. More than 50% of the respondents reported they consider COVID-19 as a punishment from God. Besides, most of the respondents reported that they do not think COVID-19 is dangerous (59%), and COVID-19 is a disease (19%). Around 7% of the total respondents reported they consider this virus as a part of a virus war (7.2%). Bivariate analysis found that socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents and factors related to social and mass media were significantly associated with misconception. However, when all the factors included together in the multivariate model, the likelihood of misconception was lower among secondary (AOR, 0.33, 95% CI, 0.13-0.84) and tertiary (AOR, 0.29, 95% CI, 0.09-0.92) educated respondents compared to respondents with primary education.ConclusionThis study obtained a very higher percentage of the rural people of Bangladesh having one or more misconceptions related to COVID-19. This could be a potential challenge in the fight against the pandemic. Effective use of mass and social media to communicate evidence based information on COVID-19 as well as to educate the public about COVID-19 is important.

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“…Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License (BioRender.com: Generic Viral Life Cycle, 2020) theories and misconceptions about viruses generally, and COVID-19 in particular. Researchers and healthcare professionals across the world have made several attempts to address some of these misconceptions (Okunlola et al, 2020;Khalid et al, 2020). However, many of these myths are yet to be fully addressed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viruses, coronaviruses and COVID-19: A note for non-virology specialists

Raji¹,

Sanusi²,

Sekawi³

2021

Afr. J. Microbiol. Res.

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An outbreak of a respiratory disease with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)like manifestations emerged in late December 2019 in the Wuhan city of China. The causative agent of this disease was later identified to be a novel Coronavirus. Subsequently, the disease was named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the World Health Organisation and later declared as a pandemic. The outbreak of COVID-19 came with many misinformation and misconceptions about viruses and the COVID-19 disease. Questions have been asked by non -virologists and the general public about what viruses are. Some wondered if viruses are living organisms or not. While some asked how big viruses are or if all viruses and the COVID-19 virus is artificially created. Yet others attributed the outbreak to the new quantum leap in the electromagnet field; the latest 5G technology. There are also concerns raised about the new virus being a bioweapon or an act of biowarfare. These numerous questions needed to be clarified concisely with available scientific knowledge. Thus, this review is providing answers to the 10 frequently asked questions aimed at informing the non -virologist in the academic field and beyond.

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Debunking Myths about COVID-19, Paranoiac Misconceptions, Recent Developments and its Current Stance

Abstract: Authors' Contribution ZK, ATK and MAY collected the relevant literature and prepared the original draft. MM and FRS contributed in improvemnet of the article. ARS supervised and reviewed the article.

Cited by 13 publications

References 54 publications

A Scalable Topical Vectored Vaccine Candidate against SARS-CoV-2

A Scalable Topical Vectored Vaccine Candidate against SARS-CoV-2

Community’s misconception about COVID-19 and its associated factors: Evidence from a cross-sectional study in Bangladesh

Viruses, coronaviruses and COVID-19: A note for non-virology specialists

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