COVID-19: Prevention and Management

In this blog post, we’ll be talking about the Prevention and Management of COVID-19 outbreak.

As we see the rising graph of positive cases around us, the very first step on an individual basis should be preventing the virus by practising various simple activities such as maintaining good personal hygiene, washing hands regularly, avoid touching face with unwashed hands, coughing/sneezing into a tissue, social distancing etc.

Government is also taking many steps so as to prevent the virus from reaching more people by restricting travel and cancelling the unnecessary one.

Following are the Preventive Measures we can take on a personal basis for safeguarding ourselves against COVID-19:

Hand Washing 🖐️

The very basic and very necessary of all is washing hands regularly. Doctors advise a 20-second wash with soap and water, before and after eating, using the toilet, coughing, sneezing and also when they are visibly dirty.

In case when water and soap aren’t accessible, sanitizer which has more than 60% alcohol by volume can be used. Even WHO has advised people all over the world to not touch their eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands.

Respiratory Hygiene 🤧

One of the most ignored preventive measures is maintaining respiratory hygiene. It includes covering the mouth with tissue paper while coughing and/or sneezing and then disposing of the tissue immediately.

It has also been seen that a lot of people (who aren’t even infected) are wearing surgical masks; which is something which shouldn’t be promoted. Only the infected people should wear masks, reason being, the mask can limit the volume and distance of the respiratory droplets exhilarated while talking, coughing or sneezing. People who are in regular contact with the infected person say, the family members are also advised to wear masks as they are at very high risk.

Anybody else than these people shouldn’t wear masks and leave them for the needy.

Social Distancing 🙏

Social distancing means staying away from people (typical lifestyle of an introvert 🤪) includes quarantine, travel restrictions, shutting down schools, theatres, workplaces, gyms etc.

Personally, we can practice social distancing by staying at home, avoiding travel, avoiding crowded places and not planning picnics as the lockdown isn’t any kind of holiday.
Even the government has mandated social distancing in the areas affected by COVID-19 outbreak.

Especially the adults, who are already suffering from some underlying medical conditions such as heart ailments or diabetes or respiratory issues should definitely stay at home and pray to God while being inside their homes.

Self-Isolation 🙅

Self-isolation means locking oneself in a room rather than attending parties (ahem ahem) especially when they are the positive cases of COVID-19 or are suspected to be one.

Management of COVID-19 is being seen in the following three stages:

Containment

This is an early-stage measure to manage the outbreak. It includes tracking down the origin and isolating the infected person. Its main motive is to stop spreading the virus.

Mitigation

It comes into picture when containment is of no use. It includes the mitigation of the effects on the health system and society.

Suppression

It’s the extreme measure to manage the outbreak and it focuses on reducing the basic reproduction (multiplication) of the virus.

Another phenomenon which is widely talked about these days in respect to the pandemic is Flattening the Curve which involves trying to decrease the peak of the outbreak as it’ll reduce the risk of health services being burdened and provides more time for developing the vaccines and treatments.

This is all for this blog post, next we’d be talking about responses on Indian as well as International level.