Recent newspaper articles have reported on the potential role of jails and prisons as “amplifiers” of the coronavirus pandemic (Ransom and Feuer 2020; Flagg and Neff 2020). For example, data from New York City jails show that 36 out of 1,000 inmates tested positive for the virus versus 4 out of 1,000 people in the city at large (The Legal Aid Society 2020).  Additional information indicates that 23 states across the United States have reported cases in correctional facilities (Coppola and Pettersson 2020).

Since December 2019, when Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan city and subsequently spread across China causing varying degrees of illness, the virus has now infected 92,100 people in at least 70 countries.  Data reported from China provide insights into the biology, epidemiology, and clinical characteristics of Covid-19.  

Men are at higher risk of Covid-19

With the realization that a novel coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) is likely, people across the globe are getting alarmed, and financial markets are starting to tumble.

With the advent of 2019-nCoV in China, the world has woken up once again to the inexorable reality that globalization, both the movement of people and goods and services across countries and from continent to continent, enables the spread of viruses and disease.