Journal of Global Radiology

Article Title

Current Concepts Imaging in COVID-19 and the Challenges for Low and Middle Income Countries

Authors

Jeffrey B. Mendel, Partners in Health, Boston, MA, USAFollow
Justine T. Lee, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USAFollow
David Rosman, Harvard University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USAFollow

Article Type

Review or Invited Commentary

Publication Date

2020-06-08

DOI

10.7191/jgr.2020.1106

Abstract

With nearly 3,800,000 cases and 270,000 deaths reported worldwide, COVID-19 is a global pandemic unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes (1). As early as 1995, the WHO was warning of a global infectious disease crisis, citing 30 new infectious diseases emerging in the past 20 years, loss of antibiotic effectiveness, low rates of immunization, poverty, and inadequate investment in public health contributing to the more than 17 million people dying each year from infectious diseases, principally in Low and Middle Income countries (LMIC) (2). Unlike previous infectious diseases, at the time of this writing over 63% of the total reported cases of COVID-19 are in 6 High Income Countries (HIC): USA, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the UK.

Information concerning the imaging findings in COVID-19 has been rapidly disseminated from the centers first affected by the pandemic. This article attempts to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding the imaging findings in COVID-19, focusing on pulmonary findings, and offer recommendation for the use of imaging for diagnosis and surveillance of COVID-19, particularly in LMIC.

Keywords

COVID-19, developing countries, radiography, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronovirus 2, income, diagnostic tests, routine lung tomography, X-ray computed ultrasonography

Rights and Permissions

© 2020 Mendel, Lee, Rosman. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Dr. Sarwat Hussain for his insight and advice in drafting this article.

Corresponding Author(s)

Jeffrey B. Mendel, M.D, Senior Health and Policy Advisor, Partners in Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; jmendel@pih.org

Repository Citation

Mendel JB, Lee JT, Rosman D. Current Concepts Imaging in COVID-19 and the Challenges for Low and Middle Income Countries. Journal of Global Radiology 2020;6(1):1106. https://doi.org/10.7191/jgr.2020.1106. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/jgr/vol6/iss1/3