Beyond the Fingerstick: Complications of Diabetes in the Acutely Ill Patient with Covid-19 with Lessons from Translation Biology and Therapeutics

The affliction that the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed on the infrastructure of healthcare institutions across the globe permeates to the level of the provider, hampering clinical decision-making capacity and capability. Associated with the latter has been unprecedented, sweeping changes in biomedical equipment manufacturing, triage dynamics, and implementation of medical interventions in a landscape replete with clinical literature attempting to characterize features in COVID-19 patients. Preliminary assessments into the elements of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the strain of coronavirus responsible for COVID-19) in addition to the delineation of patient flux pertaining to COVID-19 has identified diabetes as a prevalent comorbidity with increased mortality and increased disease burden in the acutely ill. The volume of patients with COVID-19 superimposed upon complicated diabetes exemplifies that insight into this association offers an expanded perspective of diabetes mellitus. Moreover, given the extensive organ compromise seen in COVID-19 in addition to the established notion that diabetes is a systemic syndrome of metabolism, an appraisal of the literature of me