Emerging respiratory viruses, including nCoV: methods for detection, prevention, response and control

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are known to cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A novel coronavirus (CoV) was identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China. This is a new coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans.

Course information

Overview: This course provides a general introduction to emerging respiratory viruses, including novel coronaviruses. By the end of this course, you should be able to describe:

• The nature of emerging respiratory viruses, how to detect and assess an outbreak, strategies for preventing and controlling outbreaks due to novel respiratory viruses;
• What strategies should be used to communicate risk and engage communities to detect, prevent and respond to the emergence of a novel respiratory virus.

There are resources attached to each module to help you dive further into this topic.

Learning objective: Understand the fundamental principles of emerging respiratory viruses and how to effectively respond to an outbreak.

Course duration: Approximately 1 hour.

Certificates: No certificate available at this time.

Attention:

• WHO teams are working on additional modules which will be uploaded in the coming days.
• You will be notified when new modules and videos are uploaded. Currently, the materials are offered as slide decks.
• The course will offer a certificate in the future, after all of the modules have been published and a quiz has been added to each module.

Course contents

• Module A: Introduction to Emerging respiratory viruses, including nCoV:

  Overall learning objective: To be able to explain why an emerging respiratory virus, including nCoV are a global threat to human health
   

• Module B: Detecting Emerging respiratory viruses, including nCoV: Surveillance and Laboratory investigation:

  Overall learning objective: To describe how to detect and assess an emerging respiratory virus outbreak