Abstract
In December 2019, China reported the first cases of the coronavirus
disease 2019 (COVID-19). This disease, caused by the severe acute
respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has developed
into a pandemic. To date it has resulted in ~5.6 million
confirmed cases and caused 353,334 related deaths worldwide.
Unequivocally, the COVID-19 pandemic is the gravest health and
socio-economic crisis of our time. In this context, numerous questions
have emerged in demand of basic scientific information and
evidence-based medical advice on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. Although the
majority of the patients show a very mild, self-limiting viral
respiratory disease, many clinical manifestations in severe patients are
unique to COVID-19, such as severe lymphopenia and eosinopenia,
extensive pneumonia, a “cytokine storm” leading to acute respiratory
distress syndrome, endothelitis, thrombo-embolic complications and
multiorgan failure. The epidemiologic features of COVID-19 are
distinctive and have changed throughout the pandemic. Vaccine and drug
development studies and clinical trials are rapidly growing at an
unprecedented speed. However, basic and clinical research on
COVID-19-related topics should be based on more coordinated high-quality
studies. This paper answers pressing questions, formulated by young
clinicians and scientists, on SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 and allergy, focusing
on the following topics: virology, immunology, diagnosis, management of
patients with allergic disease and asthma, treatment, clinical trials,
drug discovery, vaccine development and epidemiology. Over 140 questions
were answered by experts in the field providing a comprehensive and
practical overview of COVID-19 and allergic disease.