Hepatology in the COVID Era: Another C Virus, again Challenging the Liver

Our way of life has changed! The world is changing dramatically. Read the story! [1]. Since the beginning of 2020, the worldwide spread of a new virus has made us rethink and reinvent new ways of living and caring for patients. Doctors no longer have “the magic touch.” In late 2019, a new type of severe pneumonia associated with a new type of coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese province of Hubei (People’s Republic of China). Coronaviruses have existed for a long time, conditioning diseases in several animal species, but until 2003 (SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome]) there was no report of transmission to humans. The new coronavirus, initially called 2019n-Cov and now SARS-Cov2, is the seventh coronavirus to infect humans, as identified by the Chinese health authorities. It emerged as a human-transmitted zoonosis originating from the wild animal market in the city of Wuhan. Viruses with similar characteristics have been identified in bats, snakes, and pangolins, with an homology of genomic features showing an 89 and 82% nuclear acid sequence similarity with bat SARS-CoVZXC21 and human SARS-CoV (Wuhan patients) but the true transmitter of the disease has not yet been found [2]. The disease is called COVID-19 (COrona VIrus Disease 2019, i.e., the year of the first case and virus identification). From the point of view of transmission, it occurs among humans through contamination by particles expelled through the airways (by coughing, sneezing, and talking) but also by fomites and interpersonal contact. Aerosols and fecal-oral transmission are also considered potential sources of contamination. In addition to this community transmission, nosocomial transmission is important, since many symptomatic patients use health services where they can infect other people, particularly