COVID-19: an Introductory course

Humanity has faced countless pandemics throughout history, and it is still at risk to face future pandemics as humans explore nature and have more contact with wild animals. Respiratory viruses are of particular interest in epidemiological surveillance and the scientific community, since 1) there are many of these viruses in animals that are evolutinarily close to humans; 2) since they are transmitted by the air, their transmissibility potential is far greater than those of other viruses, hence their potential to cause a devastating pandemic!

In this course, you'll learn the basic aspects about the SARS-COV-2 and the disease it causes: COVID-19. This is a rapid, short, straight-to-the-point course, where you'll learn about the biological aspects of the SARS-Cov-2, the coronavirus that has been causing the pandemic since the beggining of 2020. In the last section, you'll also learn about other viruses that have potential to cause a pandemic or that are of special interest in the field of virology.

In the first chapter of the course, you'll be presented to introductory concepts about viruses, the main types of viruses, how they are transmitted, and introductory concepts about SARS-COV-2. You'll also see some websites to follow the epidemiological situation of SARS-COV-2 across the globe.

In Section 2, you'll learn about the structure, replication, interaction with human cells, mechanisms of evolution and the generation of variants, as well as the clinical aspects of SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19.

In Section 3, you'll learn about the proposed treatments of the COVID-19 that were investigated in the last two years of intense research.

In Section 4, you'll learn about the vaccinology of COVID-19, how the process of vaccine development woks, and which kinds of vaccines are present in most countries to prevent this disease.

In Section 5 (extra section), we'll briefly discuss about viruses that are also a matter of concern for public health authorities, like the flu virus and the HIV virus.

So... if you meet at least one of the following criteria:

1- You want to learn about the basic aspects of Sars-COV-2 virus

2- You want to know how to get updated on COVID-19 with respect to cases, deaths and vaccination status

3- You want to know how the anti-covid vaccines work and what technologies they use

4- You want ot understand the basic aspects of viral evolution and why new variants are formed

...then, this course is for you!