As part of the cultural season of the Environmental Research Center

Assist. Prof. Dr. Azhar Mahmood Haleem-lecturer in the Department of Environmental Technology-ERC presented a lecture online using the ZOOM platform on Tuesday, 5/5/2020 at 12:30 pm entitled “COVID-19 Epidemiology, Pathophysiology and, Vaccination”. The lecturer started generally with primlinary introduction to virology in terms of the most important morphological, chemical properties, strengths and weaknesses of viruses. In addition to their ability, in particular, to cause a variety of epidemics such as poliovirus, measles and smallpox. Furthermore, the serious epidemics that infected the world during the past twenty years due to the coronary family of these viruses where they started from SARS-2002, passing through MERS-2012 and most recently COVID-19. The last type caused the infection of nearly 3.5M people in 187 countries around the world and the death of nearly 2.5K people, and yet it has been still continuing killing the lives and spreading the terror in different societies.

The most important epidemiological features, methods of infection and prevalence rates of this virus have been clarified and compared with other epidemics such as influenza. In addition, the mechanism of its entry into the body and then its impact on it as the host and then causing the death of it was considered.

The lecturer recommended that the development processes of effective vaccines should be continued to reduce infection with this virus by investing the positive role playing by the World Health Organization (WHO) in this regard in providing all requirements in terms of material and technical support and encouraging the directions of research during this critical period.