COVID-19 and Animal-Based Research.

Abstract

In June 2017, AALAS published a special topic issue of Comparative Medicine on infectious disease research.14 The issue included articles on risk management, including occupational health and safety oversight5 and use of personal protective equipment,13 and finally, articles on 2 emerging diseases (Ebola9 and Zika1 virus infections) that were specifically chosen because, they were the most recent community outbreaks the world had seen. Fastforward to 2020, this special topic issue focuses on COVID-19, the new epitome of the modern-day pandemic. The pandemic started in late 2019 when cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology occurred in Wuhan, China. The novel virus was soon identified as severe acute respiratory syndromecoronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), which caused a disease that has been termed as COVID-19, spreading throughout the world and officially being declared by the World Health Organization as a pandemic on March 11, 2020.12 As of end of September 2021, more than 230 million cases and 4.7 million deaths have occurred globally, with over 43 million cases and nearly 700,000 deaths in the United States.7 While we continue to navigate through this pandemic as it sickens people and claims lives, wreaking havoc to families, communities, and nations, we find science and technology center to global, national, and local response efforts to derail its destructive path.