Two Years of COVID: The Journey to Discover a New Disease

Two years ago, MDPI launched an "Instant Journal" entitled COVID with the intention of raising awareness of research into a new disease originating from the SARS-CoV-2 infection that has affected more than 700 million individuals, with over 6 million deaths in total worldwide [1]. It was not an easy challenge, considering that all the scientific journals in the world have published and are publishing articles on this disease. To date (5 January 2024), from the “COVID-19” search entry alone, PubMed reports 405,685 papers [2].

Two years later, COVID continues to proudly publish articles on COVID-19 in all its aspects, contributing significantly to our understanding of the complexity of this disease and its impact on human health and medicine.

Today, supported by an international Editorial Board of experts, the journal covers a wide range of topics on all aspects of coronaviruses, from basic molecular and clinical research to COVID-related public health studies, physical and psychological health, economic and environmental impact, and global impact, and all other aspects affected by coronaviruses and coronavirus-related diseases.

Over the past two years, COVID has become a dynamic platform for researchers, scientists, and clinicians wanting to share groundbreaking findings, innovative methodologies, and insightful perspectives.

In 2023, COVID published 123 articles by authors from a variety of different countries (34% US, 11% Brazil, 7% UK, 6% Italy, 5% China) and promoted Special Issues such as “Analysis of Modeling and Statistics for COVID-19”, “Airborne Transmission of Diseases in Outdoors and Indoors”, “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Applications for Developing the Diagnosis of COVID-19”, “How COVID-19 and Long COVID Changed Individuals and Communities 2.0”, and “COVID-19 and Nephrology”.

Some papers have received over 700 downloads [3,4,5] and some have been cited more than 10 times [6,7,8,9].

COVID has sought, over these two years, to maintain rigorous editorial standards, ensuring that published research meets the highest criteria of quality and relevance (the rejection rate was 60.58%).

Looking to the future, the next few years promise even greater progress in the field of complex and multifactorial diseases such as COVID-19, which will necessitate prevention, treatments, molecular pathogenesis, and the analysis of economic and social consequences of pandemics from a one-health perspective. COVID is destined to remain a point of reference to can guide us towards new discoveries in this field.

We therefore look forward to the continued contributions and insights that the journal will undoubtedly bring to the world of complex and multifactorial diseases such as those induced by coronaviruses in the years to come.