Everything you should know about the coronavirus outbreak

The Pharmaceutical Journal24 AUG 2020By Kristoffer Stewart

, Dawn Connelly

, Julia Robinson

The latest information about the novel coronavirus identified in Wuhan, China, and advice on how pharmacists can help concerned patients and the public.

Open access article

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has made this feature article free to access in order to help healthcare professionals stay informed about an issue of national importance.

To learn more about coronavirus, please visit: https://www.rpharms.com/resources/pharmacy-guides/wuhan-novel-coronavirus.

Source: Shutterstock.com

Measures to guard against the infection work under the current assumption that SARS-CoV-2 is spread by respiratory droplets, although face masks are unlikely to prevent infection

A novel strain of coronavirus — SARS-CoV-2 — was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei province with a population of 11 million, after an outbreak of pneumonia without an obvious cause. The virus has now spread to over 200 countries and territories across the globe, and was characterised as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020^[1],[2].

As of 23 August 2020, there were 23,057,288 laboratory-confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection globally, with 800,906 reported deaths. The number of cases and deaths outside of China overtook those within the country on 16 March 2020^[3].