The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak began in December 2019 in Wuhan City, China, and was reported as pneumonia cases by the local media. The disease symptoms include dyspnea, fever, hemoptysis, cough, diarrhea, fatigue, headache, and pneumonia (Nicola et al., 2020). The next month, Covid-19 spread across several regions and continents, causing deaths and infecting people and animals. Although no treatment method has been established, preventative and containment measures have reduced its spread worldwide. Such efforts include quarantines, face masks, case detection, hand hygiene, and contact tracing (Nicola et al., 2020).
In late 2020, various companies announced the development of Covid-19 vaccines, including COVAX, Oxford, and others (Nicola et al., 2020). The outbreak has negative impacts on public health as most health systems have crushed under its weight. A survey by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that most countries have disrupted health services for non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular illnesses (Brunier & Margaret, 2020). Of the countries surveyed, 53% have disrupted hypertension treatments, 49% diabetes treatment, 42% cancer treatment, and 31% cardiovascular treatments and emergencies (Brunier & Margaret, 2020). As health services are disrupted across these countries, the public health situation is deteriorating.
Coronaviruses are found in both humans and animals, but they exhibit differences in gene coding. Covid-19 has genomic coding similar (96%) to the human SARS-CoV2 and the bats betaCoV RaTG13, showing that coronavirus disease 2019 evolved from a bat strain of the virus family (Cascella et al., 2020). Initially, the virus was transmitted from animals to humans in the Wuhan animal market. Human to human transmissions was later confirmed as asymptomatic patients spread the disease to their close contacts (Cascella et al., 2020). While everybody is at risk of contracting the virus, factors such as age, underlying comorbidities, sex, and ethnicity have been identified as risk factors for severity. The WHO has confirmed that the severity of symptoms increases with age and for people with comorbidities, especially diabetes and hypertension (Cascella et al., 2020). Coronavirus is transmitted from human to human, and its severity is higher among older people and those with comorbidities.
Covid-19 is closely compared to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). However, it presents less severe symptoms than both MERS and SARS (Fani et al., 2020). Additionally, Covid-19 spreads faster than the other two strains of coronavirus. It has the lowest mortality rate of 3.4%, followed by SARS at 9.6%, and MERS being the most fatal with 35% (Fani et al., 2020). Nevertheless, Covid-19, SARS, and MERS are zoonotic viruses mainly linked to bats.
The WHO recommended various prevention measures for Covid-19 before the rollout of vaccines. Although several countries have received and used Covid-19 vaccines, most people are not injected, making the WHO’s prevention measures still relevant and crucial. These methods include wearing masks, hand hygiene, social distancing, contact tracing, screening, quarantines, and isolations (Nicola et al., 2020). Wearing masks, social distancing, and hand hygiene are individual-level preventative strategies.
Three essential public health recommendations for effectively controlling the spread of Covid-19 include contact tracing, screening, and safe isolation centers. Contact tracing is the process of identifying, listing, and following up people who were in contact with probable or confirmed Covid-19 patients. Such contacts’ exposures include less than a meter of physical closeness, face-to-face closeness, direct patient care without proper protection, and presence in enclosed environments, such as public transport, churches, or schools.
References
Brunier, A., & Haris, M. (2020). COVID-19 significantly impacts health services for non-communicable diseases. World Health Organization. Web.
Cascella, M, Rajnik, M., Cuomo, A., Dulebohn, S. C. & Napoli, R. (2020). Features, evaluation and treatment coronavirus (COVID-19). Statpearls Publishing.
Fani, M., Teimoori, A., & Ghafari, S. (2020). Comparison of the COVID-2019 (SARS-CoV-2) pathogenesis with SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV infections. Future Virology, 15(5), pp. 317-323. Web.
Nicola, M., Alsafi, Z., Sohrabi, C., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., Iosifidis, C., Agha, M., & Agha, R. (2020). The socio-economic implications of the coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic: A review. International Journal of Surgery, 78, pp. 185-193. Web.