COVID-19

COVID-19 Overviews

The references in this section are overviews, definitions, or indexes that answer general questions about COVID-19, coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus

In this article, the World Health Organization gives a brief definition and overview of COVID-19. There are tabs for Overview, Prevention, and Symptoms. At the bottom of the page, they provide sections for Publications, News, and Related links.

COVID-19
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

This dashboard and index about COVID-19 is from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It consists of links to further information about COVID-19 including what to do if you feel sick, how to find the transmission rate in your county, and recommendations regarding travel, vaccines, and dealing with COVID-19 in specific settings.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19

This page from the World Health Organization is formatted as a series of questions and answers about COVID-19. Clicking on a question exposes a brief answer to the question that is relatively clear and easy to understand.

COVID-19 Charts and Graphs

The references below are charts, graphs, cheat sheets, and dashboards that illustrate different aspects of COVID-19, coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2. They each attempt to show some of the main features and characteristics of this pandemic in a compact, visual display.

COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Compilation of data, graphs, and spreadsheets from Worldometers showing COVID-19 statistics from around the world. The spreadsheet on the opening page allows you to drill down into statistics for individual countries.

WHO COVID-19 dashboard
https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/cases?n=c

COVID-19 dashboard from the World Health Organization showing the countries of the world and the COVID-19 situation in each. If you are using a mouse, you can hover over a country to reveal additional COVID-19 statistics about that country.

COVID-19 Coronavirus Data Dashboard
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/

Cheat sheet from information is beautiful containing multiple charts related to COVID-19. These charts show COVID-19 infection trajectories for various countries, infection and fatality rates by country, coronavirus riskiest activities, and other details illustrating various aspects of this pandemic.

Timeline: WHO's COVID-19 response
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/interactive-timeline/

Timeline of responses to COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO). The timeline shows WHO's response at each point during this pandemic, grouped by category.

COVID-19 Treatments

Information about COVID-19 treatments. Treatments as used here means any pharmaceutical, therapeutic, antibody, or biologic other than vaccines.

What's New in the Guidelines
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/about-the-guidelines/whats-new/

The US National Institutes of Health publishes this guide to show what is new in the realm of treatments for COVID-19. Various categories of therapeutics are discussed.

Scientists Say The Rush To Do COVID Research Led To A Whole Lot Of Waste
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/23/988744818/scientists-say-the-rush-to-do-covid-research-led-to-a-whole-lot-of-waste

Many (if not most) of the clinical trials done on COVID-19 treatments were wastes of time, money, and hope. If fewer studies had been done with larger numbers of participants, the results would have been far superior. Newer clinical trial techniques such as adaptive clinical trials were needed to sort out the effectiveness of treatments.

BIO COVID-19 Therapeutic Development Tracker
https://www.bio.org/policy/human-health/vaccines-biodefense/coronavirus/pipeline-tracker

Dashboard of various categories of COVID-19 treatments in the pipeline. This overview by BIO’s Industry Analysis Team shows which treatments and types of treatments are being pursued by which countries. The information is organized with colorful graphics and tables making it possible to understand the big picture and drill down into the details.

COVID-19 Vaccines

Information about COVID-19 vaccines. This includes vaccines in use, vaccines under development, and information about the process of developing vaccines.

Comparing the COVID-19 Vaccines: How Are They Different?
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-comparison

Overview and description of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, and the Novavax vaccine.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

Charts and statistics giving information about COVID-19 vaccinations.

Historical Vaccine Safety Concerns
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html

On this page, the U.S. CDC discusses vaccine safety. Although vaccines are generally safe, the CDC explores past vaccine safety issues, how they were resolved, and what was learned as a result.

COVID-19 Cleaning and Disinfecting

The references in this section explain how to clean and disinfect against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. There are also documents that answer common questions and define the role of various U.S. government agencies in regulating cleaning and disinfecting products.

List N Advanced Search Page: Disinfectants for Coronavirus (COVID-19)
https://www.epa.gov/coronavirus/list-n-advanced-search-page-disinfectants-coronavirus-covid-19

This page is a list of products that meet the U.S. EPA's criteria for use against COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2. The list shows the EPA registration number, active ingredient(s), product name, directions to follow, and contact time in minutes to kill the virus. More information is available by clicking on the green + sign by the EPA registration number. The List N Tool provides a different way to filter and view the same list of products.

List N Tool: COVID-19 Disinfectants
https://cfpub.epa.gov/wizards/disinfectants/

This is a list of products that meet U.S. EPA's criteria for use against COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2. The list shows the EPA registration number, active ingredient(s), product name, company, directions to follow, contact time in minutes to kill the virus, formulation type, surface type, and use site. The top left part of the screen allows you to filter the list by EPA registration number, active ingredient, use site, contact time, or keyword. The preceding List N page provides a different way to view the same list of products. Click the Launch button to get started.

6 Steps for Safe & Effective Disinfectant Use
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/documents/disinfectants-onepager.pdf

This infographic from the U.S. EPA illustrates how to use disinfectants against SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 in six simple steps.

What does FDA regulate?
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/what-does-fda-regulate

This page broadly defines the product categories regulated by the U.S. FDA and provides a non-exhaustive list of these categories. In general, the FDA regulates food, drugs and biologics, medical devices, certain electronic products, cosmetics, veterinary products, and tobacco products.

How does EPA know that the products on List N work on SARS-CoV-2?
https://www.epa.gov/coronavirus/how-does-epa-know-products-list-n-work-sars-cov-2

This is a brief look at why the U.S. EPA believes the products on List N will work against SARS-CoV-2. The basic answer is, although the disinfectants on this list have not been tested specifically against SARS-CoV-2, the EPA expects them to kill this virus because they have demonstrated effectiveness against a harder-to-kill virus or they have demonstrated effectiveness against other coronaviruses.

COVID-19 News and Updates

The COVID-19 pandemic is constantly evolving. Keeping up with this pandemic requires news that is also constantly evolving. The following news pages present breaking news and important updates related to COVID-19 all on one page, allowing the reader a chance to keep up.

Coronavirus
https://www.livescience.com/topics/coronavirus

Live Science here provides the latest news on COVID-19. The news is presented in an simple format with each news item occupying one paragraph. These paragraphs are presented in chronological order with the most recent news at the top of the page.

Coronavirus Pandemic
https://www.cbsnews.com/feature/coronavirus/2/

CBS News compilation of news items related to COVID-19. Each item is formatted as an image, a title, and a summary sentence. To view an entire article, click on its title.

Business News CORONAVIRUS
https://www.cnbc.com/coronavirus/

CNBC here provides the latest news and updates on COVID-19. The news is presented in an easy-to-understand format with each news item occupying one square on the page. Each news item is formatted as an image and a title. To view the entire article, click on either the image or the title. The latest news is located at the top of the page. Following this are additional categories of news.

COVID-19 Coronavirus Disease: Articles of Interest
https://www.medicinenet.com/coronavirus_covid-19_sars_cov_2_news_updates/article.htm

Medicine Net, a part of the WebMD network, has provided this collection of news items related to COVID-19. Each news item is formatted as an image plus the first few sentences of the full article. Click on the Read More button to see the entire article.

CORONAVIRUS
https://www.science.org/collections/coronavirus?intcmp=sci_cov

Science here provides an index of articles giving research, analysis, and news coverage of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2. Each item in the index is formatted with a descriptive title, the author(s), and the date. Click on the title to view the full article. The articles are very informative, but somewhat technical. They are presented in chronological order, with the most recent first.

Coronavirus Disease COVID 19
https://www.news-medical.net/condition/Coronavirus-Disease-COVID-19

Summary of COVID-19 news compiled by News Medical. These news articles are very informative and thorough, but somewhat technical.

COVID-19 Related Information

There is a wealth of information surrounding COVID-19, coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The references below provide supplemental information and additional documents to help explore, explain, and give context to these and related subjects.

Pandemic Influenza Plan 2017 Update
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/pdf/pan-flu-report-2017v2.pdf

This PDF describes the U.S. Health and Human Services approach to protecting human health before, during, and after an influenza pandemic. This is their 2017 update to the original 2009 document. Although this document is not specifically intended as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the plans outlined here still apply.

What 'state of emergency' means for coronavirus
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/politics/state-of-emergency-meaning-explained/index.html

When a unit of government declares a state of emergency, what does that really mean? Here, CNN explains what this allows the government to do differently and what it might mean for you.

World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/11/who-declares-the-coronavirus-outbreak-a-global-pandemic.html

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday, March 11, 2020. In this article, CNBC discusses what a pandemic is, why they declared a pandemic now, and what it might mean for you.

Why Covid-19 is so dangerous for older adults
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21173783/coronavirus-death-age-covid-19-elderly-seniors

In this article, Vox discusses why COVID-19 is so dangerous for older adults. Using findings from China and Italy, we can see that the average age of those who died from COVID-19 is older than the average age of those testing positive. There is a useful chart embedded in this article that illustrates this fact.

The Animal Origins of Coronavirus and Flu
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-do-animal-viruses-like-coronavirus-jump-species-20200225/

Tara C. Smith is a professor of epidemiology at the Kent State University College of Public Health. In this Quanta Magazine article she explains how viruses can spread from animals to humans. She discusses previous coronavirus illnesses that jumped from animals to humans including the original Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).

Scientists figure out how new coronavirus breaks into human cells
https://www.livescience.com/how-coronavirus-infects-cells.html

Live Science published this article that explains how SARS-CoV-2 breaks into human cells. Researchers revealed how the new virus attaches to a receptor on respiratory cells. This contributed to research on effective antiviral drugs and vaccines for this virus.

What Are the Different Types of Clinical Research?
https://www.fda.gov/patients/clinical-trials-what-patients-need-know/what-are-different-types-clinical-research

This page from the FDA explains what is meant by various types of clinical research, such as 'Treatment Research' or 'Quality of Life Research'. It also explains the meaning of phases of a clinical trial such as Phase I, Phase II, Phase III, or Phase IV.

Fast Track, Breakthrough Therapy, Accelerated Approval, Priority Review
https://www.fda.gov/patients/learn-about-drug-and-device-approvals/fast-track-breakthrough-therapy-accelerated-approval-priority-review

In various reports, terms such as 'Fast Tracked' or having 'Accelerated Approval' are used. These are the FDA's definitions of these and similar terms.