Coronavirus Latest Update and its cure or medicine
Coronavirus has spread in more than 100 countries across the world. According to the latest information, if you contract it, then what will be your symptoms? How are these symptoms different from the common cough and cold. How easily does it spread and how fatal can it be for you?
How are the governments and countries across the world reacting to it?. How is the Indian government reacting? Why is the coming week going to be critical for India?
What are the DOs and the DON'Ts?
Come let us know all of this information in this article today. When I post my last article on coronavirus at the beginning of February, then the virus was limited in China. There had been around 25,000 cases and around 500 casualties. Today, there have been more than 275,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths worldwide. There have been more than 90,000 recoveries too when I had posted an article earlier, the virus had yet not been named. It was being called as the Novel CoronaVirus Now, the scientists have named it as SARS-CoV--2. Because this virus is very similar to the SARS virus that had spread in 2003 and hence it is being referred to as SARS-CoV--2 and the disease caused by this virus has been named COVID-19.At the rate at which this virus is spreading, cities worldwide have been locked down to contain its spread Schools, restaurants, shops, cinemas, gyms, air travel- all have been shut down and what is the exact reasoning behind this will be explained later in this video as to why it is so important.
LET'S TALK ABOUT THE SYMPTOMS
All the cases in China have been analyzed by doctors and researchers to find out the exact symptoms of COVID-19 and how is it different from the common cold and flu their analysis revealed that in 88% of the cases fever is mandatorily seen in the cases of COVID-19. There is dry cough in 68% of the cases there is fatigue in 38% of the cases and shortness of breath in 18% of them Looking at this in (Fig.1),
You can surmise that if you have a fever or dry cough then the chances of you having COVID-19 are quite high Observe what are the differences with common cold If you have a common cold, then the biggest symptom is a runny nose But the factor of runny nose in COVID-19 has only been seen in 5% of the cases So, if you have a runny nose, then you can relax It means that there is a high chance that you might just have a common cold and not COVID-19 When compared with flu, shortness of breath is a huge difference If you are having difficulty breathing then it is a symptom of COVID-19. It is not a symptom of common cold or influenza You can look at exactly what symptoms are different in this chart amongst COVID-19, common cold and flu. Another important thing regarding the symptoms that has been said by the World Health Organization is that only mild symptoms are visible in 80% of the COVID-19 cases that is, 80% of the people who have contracted the COVID-19, will not experience a lot of pain. Their bodies will recover on their own without doing anything Severe symptoms are visible in 14% of the COVID-19 cases and 4.7% of the cases will require critical care and they will need to go to the hospital In the rest of the cases, there might be Death. You Can see in (Fig.2)
Generally, on average, it can take 5-6 days for symptoms to show up in your body But you are contagious in 5-6 days You've contracted the infection while you assume yourself to be healthy and fit and you have no disease but then too, you can spread the infection to other people. This is what makes COVID-19 extremely dangerous. The symptoms are not visible in the people and they go out and interact with other people and they spread the disease.
CHANCES OF DEATH
If we divide the total number of deaths by the total number of cases worldwide, now this number would emerge to be around 4%. But experts still believe that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is only around 2% because there are a lot of cases that are not being reported.
There are a lot of countries that are asking people to come for tests only when symptoms are visible but we have seen that only mild symptoms are visible in a lot of cases and a lot of people are being rejected for testing as sufficient testing is not available In the case of China it has been seen that there have been deaths in 15% of the cases if age is 80 plus. You can look at this chart here (Fig.3) There is this age group of 10-39 years in which there have been deaths in only 0.2% of the cases So now it is clear that COVID-19 is more deadly for the elderly
The same graph can be seen in (Fig.4) for various health issues you can see that there were deaths in 10% of the cases with. cardiovascular disease the people already having diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer have higher chances of dying due to COVID-19. A few more interesting conclusions surface while examining the mortality rate country by country
For example, in Germany, where 16,000 cases have been seen, there have been only 44 deaths Its death rate is merely 0.27%
If we observe the same thing in the UK, the death rate there comes out to be 4.4% In Italy, the death rates have come out to be 8.3% So, you can see how many people have actually been dying out of the cases reported there is a huge difference in this country by country.
GERMANY AND SOUTH KOREA
- The first reason is that 70% of the Corona Virus cases is in the young people in Germany which is the 20-50 years age group and these are those people that had gone to spend their vacations skiing in Italy So these were the first people to bring the infection to Germany and so the majority of the cases are in the young people and since young people have a better chance of survival, their fatality/mortality rate is low.
- The second reason given by a German virologist was- Test, Test, Test Germany took testing very seriously and has been conducting tests on a very large scale of the common people
- The third season has been said to be the good healthcare system of Germany the hospital bed availability in Germany is far better in comparison with the other countries. When you look at the hospital beds in the European countries per hundred thousand population, then Germany emerges at number 1 with 823 hospital beds and Italy comes way below with 331 beds.
South Korea is another example which has been very successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 The same reasons have been told behind this. There is a sufficient number of hospital beds in that country testing of people was conducted on a large scale. The infected people were kept isolated and the country reacted very quickly. So great has South Korea's example been that the number of daily cases there have been declining The graph has been declining in South Korea If you look at the graph (Fig.5) of the total number of COVID-19 tests by each country, then South Korea is at number 1, Germany is at number 2 So it is quite clear that if we want to restrict the spread of this virus, then testing needs to be increased in our country too.
HOW DOES THE VIRUS SPREAD?
According to the latest information, this virus is mainly spread by person to person contact If you are in close contact with an infected person, that is if you are around 6 feet close, then you have very high chances of contracting the virus another source is respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes, then if the respiratory droplets that come out go inside your nose or mouth, then you too can get the infection and if these respiratory droplets persist in the air, then the virus can survive for three hours in the air. If they fall on a surface, then this virus can survive for a day on cardboard and the virus can survive up to three days on plastic and steel If you order a package for delivery from China...Some people were getting too afraid beforehand there is no need to be afraid because, as I said, it does not survive on cardboard for more than a day.R0 that is, reproduction rate tells us the reproduction rate of the virus.R0 means how many more people will an infected person infect, on average In the last article I had said that the x-axis in the graph was that of contagiousness Even now it is being estimated that the R0 of this new virus is around 2-3. On average, one person will infect two to three people In comparison with a lot of other diseases, it is quite low but when compared with flu, The R0 value of flu is 1.3- so this is many times more than that the SARS virus that had spread in 2003 had an R0 value similar to it, if not more But then too, that virus did not spread anywhere beyond China and South East Asia For some reason the world was successful in controlling it and now it is not successful in controlling the novel coronavirus.
SOCIAL DISTANCING
Due to this virus, talks of social distancing are being done today that is, avoid getting out of your homes and when you do get out of your houses, then maintain distance from the other people maintain a distance of approximately 6-7 feet so that you do not come into close contact with them and the infection does not spread a lot You might think that you are healthy and how does it affect you so much? I am anyways so young, so my chances of dying from this virus are very less so I will go out -it does not affect me.
I would like to show you an example
If everyone practices social distancing how much of an effect it would have on the spread of the virus this is a very interesting simulation made by the Washington Post newspaper
Consider every dot on it as a person a Blue dot means a healthy person A brown dot represents an infected person and a pink dot stands for a person who has recovered In the graph that you can see above, the x-axis represents a time whereas the y-axis represents the total number of infected people So you can see, as the people interact with one another, how the virus keeps spreading The number of infected people increase You will see that over time all the elderly people got infected and later, they recovered. Now look at the same example if everyone practices social distancing from one another that is, if they do not come out of their houses, then the dot is not going to move- it is going to remain stable You would notice that these dots are interacting lesser with one another. They are coming in less contact with one another and so, over time,
the graph is rising slowly- the number of infected people is rising slowly and the time is spread out.
Now compare both the graphs One graph resembles a mountain and the other resembles a small hill If you look at the peak points of these graphs, observe the number of infected people at that point of time
There are far more infected people (in the graph ) without social distancing and at that point in time, the number of hospital beds in our cities and countries are restricted
So we can draw a line in between that refers to the capacity of our healthcare system
At any given point of time, if more than that number of people want to come to the hospital, then our healthcare system will not be able to keep them. There will be a scarcity of both hospital and hospital beds So this is what is going to happen without social distancing. A point of time will come when so many infected people will come in and not enough hospital beds will be available for them so the people that can be saved will not get saved This is called flattening the curve and this is the exact reason why COVID-19 became such a huge crisis in Italy
Thgogovernmenttnt there was not prepared. The number of infected people rose so drastically that there was a dearth of space in hospitals
there weren't enough Hospital beds Today, the situation is so pathetic that the doctors have to decide which patient to treat first while there is only one hospital bed I can only care for one I will have to prioritize. I should take up this person because the other has more chances of fatality These are preventable deaths. This is the reason why the other countries took the example of Italy and learnt from it and now the countries across the world have been taking more action towards social distancing Public places are being shut down People are being told to stay indoors. New hospitals are being constructed. Stadiums are being converted into hospitals so that there is sufficient availability of hospital beds.
"JANTA CURFEW"
As a first step, this is a great decision to tell people to not step out of their homes and to self-quarantine themselves but this is just the first step- it will not be enough I have read a lot of WhatsApp forwards claiming that this is a masterstroke. People have been told to not step out of their houses for 14 hours and this virus can survive for only 12 hours and so this virus will vanish completely after these 14 hours "That is not true" The virus is not going to go away by quarantining for 14 hours We will have to do this for the next 2-3 weeks reduce going out of your houses as much as possible adopt as many social distancing measures as possible Police in France and Italy have been fining people for stepping out of their homes without a proper reason Colombia is a country in South America that has declared a 19-day quarantine for the entire country even when there hasn't been a single death due to coronavirus It is very good that they are preparing beforehand looking at these countries, we too, need to take stricter measures. One day will not make a difference It will be required to do this for the next 2-3 weeks but at the same time, there is nothing to panic about or to get worried about some people have been fearing so much that they have been picking up all the stock from the markets as if some apocalypse is about to break loose It is making no difference upon the supply of food. Videos have come up where people can be seen stocking up on toilet paper"This is sheer stupidity" As I have said, the quarantine measures and social distancing measures are being undertaken so that our health care system is able to sustain the infected number of people so that care is available to all those who need it at the proper time It might take a year for the COVID 19 vaccine to arrive so until then, efforts are on to control its spread angela Merkel, the head of the state of Germany has stated that around 40-70% of the population of Germany can get infected by this virus if they do not undertake any measures even though the mortality rate is so low if such a huge amount of the population gets infected,
the deaths that we see could be around g=hundreds of thousands or even in millions
This is why it is so essential to slow it down
Some people state that the spread of the virus will be contained due to the heat with the onset of summers but WHO maintains that we should not rest false hopes on this
Although some research has shown that with every rise in temperature of 1 degree, some percentage of the spread of this virus is reduced.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
Due to the virus directly and due to the lockdown of the cities, as well as shut down of public places the people have been unable to work. This will have such an economic impact on the world economy which hasn't been seen in centuries. Some governments have already declared they will pay salary to the people who are unable to go to work. The governments will save the companies from being bankrupt and shutting down In a lot of European countries, in New Zealand, in the UK and even in the US it has been declared that government funds worth billions of dollars are being brought in to save the people from its economic impact politics is changing worldwide, Right-wing parties have been talking about left-wing policies that they would give out money to the people and money would be given in the hands of the consumers.
Do not forget to wash your hands because hand washing is one of the most important preventive measures which you can take up to protect yourself from COVID 19 wash your hands in the proper manner wash your hands for 30 seconds