Just as we suspected, Covid-19 has made even greater of an impact on the world. The Lancet gives some information about the epidemic itself. Most countries will experience effects of the virus before it can be reduced by any type of treatment or containment plan. In the meantime, social distancing and isolation have shown to be effective in reducing the number of cases. One of the other parts of this article I found the most interesting are the statistics on the severity of the cases. It says, “about 80% of people with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic disease, 14% have severe disease, and 6% are critically ill.” This goes to show that the majority of those who have this disease may not even know it. In fact, some of us could have come in contact with it and just not realized it. Because of this we are acting as asymptomatic carriers and spreading the disease to the elderly and immunocompromised where it will be a more critical or even fatal situation. The duration of the infectious period seems to be fairly long for the virus. Although some sources say differently, the average is around 10 days. This is now considered more than an epidemic and is rather a pandemic because it has spread across the globe.
This is a hot topic in the United States right now as Covid-19 has made its appearance and begun to spread rapidly. States are quickly going into states of emergency with the increasing number of outbreaks. Universities, companies, and communities are taking extra measures of precaution by minimizing person to person contact, large crowds, and increasing disinfecting measures. The Washington Post notes that the main problem with this disease is that we are still learning about it and we don’t know whether it will go away or decrease in the summer months, we don’t know what its exact fatality rate will be, and how different climates may affect the spread of disease. These are all important features of the virus that will determine its spread and the only way to discover the answers to these questions is to give researches time to study the course of the virus.
The Washington Post also discusses the seriousness of this virus when it hits less developed countries. This article says, “One of the grim lessons from the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa is how an epidemic can grow when it hits countries with weak health infrastructures.” This is a thought I had not thought about previously, but is a very good point. If we in the developed countries are having difficulty treating and containing the disease, how do we expect underdeveloped countries to do this. We have a great number of resources to use, whereas in these countries they have very little. The best way to help this situation is to prevent the spread of the virus to these areas, but this can only be done for so long. We need to begin thinking about ways to help with this, but problems may arise with this as well. How do we go to these countries trying to help prevent the spread when we ourselves may be the asymptomatic carriers?
Altogether Covid-19 is causing quite an uproar in not only our nation, but worldwide. Stay tuned for more updates on this pandemic, but in the meantime…wash your hands and don’t touch your face! 😉
Magnifying Microbiology 