Real-time monitoring of COVID-19 in Scotland

Background To manage the public health risk posed by COVID-19 and assess the impact of interventions, policymakers must be able to closely monitor the epidemic’s trajectory.

Methods Here we present a simple methodology based on basic surveillance metrics for monitoring the spread of COVID-19 and its burden on health services in Scotland.

Results We examine how the dynamics of the epidemic have changed over time and assess the similarities and differences between metrics.

Emerging pharmacotherapy for COVID-19

Broadly speaking, pharmacological treatments for COVID-19 can be divided into those acting on upstream pathways early on in the disease process via suppression of viral replication or by inhibiting cell entry, and those acting on downstream pathways later on via selective attenuation of the adaptive immune cytokine-mediated inflammatory response. The antiviral drug remdesivir has been shown to shorten duration of disease while interferon beta-1b may speed up viral clearance. The results with hydroxychloroquine have thus far been rather disappointing.