1 INTRODUCTION
On the 30thJanuary 2020, World Health Organization affirmed the outbreak of
coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a health crisis of global concern and
on the 11th March 2020, as a pandemic
(World Health Organization
[WHO], 2020a, 2020b). The outbreak was initially detected in China,
Wuhan, around December 2019 (WHO, 2020c; Huang et al., 2020). Currently,
COVID-19 is a persisting pandemic, triggered by severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (WHO, 2020d). Before we proceed, it
is interesting to briefly review the current problem.
As of 21st June
2020, more than 8,815,743 cases of SARS-CoV-2 have been conveyed in 188
different countries, ensuing 464,895 mortalities (COVID-19 Dashboard by
Center for Systems Science and Engineering [CSSE], 2020).
The pandemic has triggered worldwide social and economic disturbance, with the leading economic
depression from the time when there was a Great Depression
(International Monetary Fund
[IMF] Blog, 2020). Moreover, misleading information about the
virus has spread far and wide (Clamp, 2020); even some public members
have raised direct questions about the possibilities of ticks to
transmit the virus (Annapolis,
2020). These questions have not
received a simple solution so far. The Entomological Society of America
by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of
Vector-Borne Diseases, have provided information that there is no
evidence to support the fact that ticks can transmit SARS-CoV-2
(Entomological Society of America, 2020). A closer look at the
literature reveals a few gaps and shortcomings. With that in mind, I
raise more questions about the findings of Traavik and his colleagues,
reported four decades ago, during the 1973-1980 period; can their work
be considered to provide hints and hypothesis that can be tested to
answer the above mentioned questions?