Heroic efforts, sacrifices and leadership: it’s all in a day’s work for nurses before, during and after the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China last year has produced a large-scale coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. As we are writing this, across the world there are more than a million cases, and the death toll has reached more than 100,000 people. In Brazil as well as other countries, some individuals theorized that the virus was “created” in laboratories, and some religious groups raised the idea that the virus signaled the onset of the apocalypse. However, a recent scientific study has concluded that the virus is the product of natural evolution⁽¹⁾, ending any rumor about deliberate genetic engineering. In Brazil, COVID-19 was first diagnosed on February 26^th and has already spread throughout all the states and territories.