COVID-19 and dermatological symptoms

The advent of a new viral disease in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought new clinical challenges, both in diagnosis and management and also in the pathophysiological association of ‘unusual’ or ‘unexpected’ presentations. Three zoonotic global coronavirus outbreaks have occurred over the last two decades. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was first recognised in China in 2002 and identified as being due to SARS-CoV. This was followed by Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), colloquially known as ‘camel flu’, detected in Saudi Arabia 2012 and caused by MERS-CoV. The latest is COVID-19, which is caused by SARS-CoV-2 and originated in Wuhan, China, in 2019 (Rongioletti, 2020).

The first COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) case, as reported by the South China Morning Post, was detected on 17 November 2019 and allegedly arose from a Chinese seafood and poultry market. The first death from this virus in China was reported on 11 January 2020. To date, COVID-19 has affected well over 10 million people globally and caused the death of more than 500 000 people. The common symptoms of COVID-19 are: high temperature, new continuous cough, shortness of breath/breathing difficulties and body aches and pains. Multi-organ involvement can occur in severe cases (Wang et al, 2020).