Islamabad : The illness caused by new coronavirus COVID-19 has emerged as a highly contagious disease in global scenario having capacity to infect a large number of people due to much higher level of transmission capacity and it may cause serious disease with complications in high risk groups though in well over 90 per cent of the cases, the disease has proved to be self-limiting and majority of patients recover in two to three weeks.
Self-segregation and home based treatment with hot fluids is recommended while community should be educated to know the respiratory protocols to respect others and cover their faces with tissue papers while sneezing or coughing to prevent others from infection and also to properly dispose of the infected or used tissues and wash hands frequently.
Epidemiologist Dr. Muhammad Najeeb Durrani who is also Member GOARN (Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network) expressed this while talking to ‘The News’ on current perspective and challenges after appearance of two confirmed cases of coronavirus related illness in Pakistan.
He explained that the virus is transmitted through droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes. After each sneeze or cough, the droplets spread in the air and remain suspended in air that may infect nearby people within a distance of three to nine feet. These droplets take 10 minutes to half-an-hour for falling on the floors where they remain alive for 12 hours. The virus can also be spread by hands contaminated with viruses on the surfaces where it can lie alive from six to 12 hours, he said.
People carry viruses through their hands and take these to one’s eyes or nose. Door knobs, utensils or other like items touched by the patient’s hands get infected and virus remains on these surfaces for some time to infect those touching these knobs and carrying the germs to their eyes or nose as per habits. Frequent hand washing with soup after visiting places, during or after meeting people is mandatory, said Dr. Durrani.
He said to prevent transmission, people should cover their mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing, and wash their hands regularly and frequently. It can spread easily and can cause infections through schools, barracks, nursing homes, offices, factories and hostels. Besides that the air travel remains a very important risk factor so one must avoid unnecessary travel.
Staff posted at ports can only check temperature however at initial time when the virus is inside and just not multiplied enough inside the body to cause viremia, (multiplication leads to fever when virus is in the bloodstream and multiplying), there might be no symptoms despite the fact that a patient is having infection and thus the patient can escape all barriers, he said.
Dr. Durrani who has served as District Health Officer Islamabad said the main areas of work to avoid spread of COVID-19 include establishment of a surveillance mechanism to promptly detect cases and rapidly confirm the new ones along with tracing their contacts and those attending patients for segregation if needed.
Training of healthcare providers in medical OPDs to adopt strict barrier nursing for infection control is also a must while health education through media campaigns for the general public for learning the respiratory protocols can play vital role. Media should educate people on importance of frequent hand washing with soup and for segregating the sick inside houses and bringing the patients progressing to severity or those falling in high-risk group to the hospitals. Every hospital should have a standard protocol for infection control department and standard isolation units should be developed in all tertiary care hospitals, he said.
Stockpiling and availability of Personal Protective Equipment and clinical case management of infected cases is of great importance. Samples are highly contagious and need to be safely transported keeping all possible bio safety measures for infection control to the National Institute of Health
The only preventive measure for the prevention of influenzas and many respiratory diseases, the measure that is internationally acclaimed protocol is frequent hand washing and repeatedly making ablutions for five times a day for offering prayer cover all exposed parts of entry of virus into the body, thus washing these microorganisms away, said Dr. Durrani.
