Rapid publications risk the integrity of science in the era of COVID-19

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Abstract

Background

Preprint manuscripts, rapid publications and opinion pieces have been essential in permitting the lay press and public health authorities to preview data relating to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), including the range of clinical manifestations and the basic epidemiology early on in the pandemic. However, the rapid dissemination of information has highlighted some issues with communication of scientific results and opinions in this time of heightened sensitivity and global concern.

Main text

Rapid publication of COVID-19 literature through expedited review, preprint publications and opinion pieces are important resources for the medical scientific community. Yet the risks of unverified information loom large in times when the healthcare community is desperate for information. Information that has not been properly vetted, or opinion pieces without solid evidence, may be used to influence public health policy decisions. We discuss three examples of unverified information and the consequences in this time of high anxiety surrounding COVID-19.

Conclusions

In an era when information can be widely and swiftly disseminated, it is important to ensure that the scientific community is not an inadvertent source of misinformation. This will require a multimodal approach, with buy-in from editors, publishers, preprint servers, authors and journalists. The landscape of medical publications has changed, and a collaborative approach is required to maintain a high standard of scientific communications.

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Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany

Camilla Rothe, Mirjam Schunk, Peter Sothmann … (2020)

To the Editor: The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan is currently causing concern in the medical community as the virus is spreading around the world. 1 Since identification of the virus in late December 2019, the number of cases from China that have been imported into other countries is on the rise, and the epidemiologic picture is changing on a daily basis. We are reporting a case of 2019-nCoV infection acquired outside Asia in which transmission appears to have occurred during the incubation period in the index patient. A 33-year-old otherwise healthy German businessman (Patient 1) became ill with a sore throat, chills, and myalgias on January 24, 2020. The following day, a fever of 39.1°C (102.4°F) developed, along with a productive cough. By the evening of the next day, he started feeling better and went back to work on January 27. Before the onset of symptoms, he had attended meetings with a Chinese business partner at his company near Munich on January 20 and 21. The business partner, a Shanghai resident, had visited Germany between January 19 and 22. During her stay, she had been well with no signs or symptoms of infection but had become ill on her flight back to China, where she tested positive for 2019-nCoV on January 26 (index patient in Figure 1) (see Supplementary Appendix, available at NEJM.org, for details on the timeline of symptom development leading to hospitalization). On January 27, she informed the company about her illness. Contact tracing was started, and the above-mentioned colleague was sent to the Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine in Munich for further assessment. At presentation, he was afebrile and well. He reported no previous or chronic illnesses and had no history of foreign travel within 14 days before the onset of symptoms. Two nasopharyngeal swabs and one sputum sample were obtained and were found to be positive for 2019-nCoV on quantitative reverse-transcriptase–polymerase-chain-reaction (qRT-PCR) assay. 2 Follow-up qRT-PCR assay revealed a high viral load of 108 copies per milliliter in his sputum during the following days, with the last available result on January 29. On January 28, three additional employees at the company tested positive for 2019-nCoV (Patients 2 through 4 in Figure 1). Of these patients, only Patient 2 had contact with the index patient; the other two patients had contact only with Patient 1. In accordance with the health authorities, all the patients with confirmed 2019-nCoV infection were admitted to a Munich infectious diseases unit for clinical monitoring and isolation. So far, none of the four confirmed patients show signs of severe clinical illness. This case of 2019-nCoV infection was diagnosed in Germany and transmitted outside Asia. However, it is notable that the infection appears to have been transmitted during the incubation period of the index patient, in whom the illness was brief and nonspecific. 3 The fact that asymptomatic persons are potential sources of 2019-nCoV infection may warrant a reassessment of transmission dynamics of the current outbreak. In this context, the detection of 2019-nCoV and a high sputum viral load in a convalescent patient (Patient 1) arouse concern about prolonged shedding of 2019-nCoV after recovery. Yet, the viability of 2019-nCoV detected on qRT-PCR in this patient remains to be proved by means of viral culture. Despite these concerns, all four patients who were seen in Munich have had mild cases and were hospitalized primarily for public health purposes. Since hospital capacities are limited — in particular, given the concurrent peak of the influenza season in the northern hemisphere — research is needed to determine whether such patients can be treated with appropriate guidance and oversight outside the hospital.

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Medical Journals and the 2019-nCoV Outbreak

Eric Rubin, Lindsey Baden, Stephen Morrissey … (2020)

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Do anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen aggravate coronavirus? Here’s the research

EK Howley (2020)

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Author and article information

Contributors

N. Bagdasarian:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1133-8309

natasha_bagdasarian@nuhs.edu.sg

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med

Title: BMC Medicine

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1741-7015

Publication date (Electronic): 25 June 2020

Publication date PMC-release: 25 June 2020

Publication date Collection: 2020

Volume: 18

Electronic Location Identifier: 192

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.412106.0, ISNI 0000 0004 0621 9599, Division of Infectious Diseases, , Department of Medicine, National University Hospital, ; Singapore, Singapore

[2 ]GRID grid.4280.e, ISNI 0000 0001 2180 6431, Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, , National University of Singapore, ; Singapore, Singapore

Author information

N. Bagdasarian http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1133-8309

Article

Publisher ID: 1650

DOI: 10.1186/s12916-020-01650-6

PMC ID: 7315694

PubMed ID: 32586327

SO-VID: f79dba7c-83f2-4f7b-bb3e-70c6c46a3c06

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 24 March 2020

Date accepted : 21 May 2020

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Medicine

Keywords: covid-19,rapid publications,preprint manuscripts

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Medicine

Keywords: covid-19, rapid publications, preprint manuscripts

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Rapid publications risk the integrity of science in the era of COVID-19

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Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 4

Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany

Medical Journals and the 2019-nCoV Outbreak

Do anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen aggravate coronavirus? Here’s the research

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Cited by 36

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