‘Every citizen should play a role in this war against the pandemic’

Mysore/Mysuru: Dr. M.G. Satish Kumar, Consultant Internal Medicine at Columbia Asia Hospital, Mysuru, says that full impact of COVID-19 is still not known and the present condition is still the tip of the iceberg. Only suppression and mitigation are important to combat the disease, he reasoned.

“With many countries adopting lockdown to overcome the spread of the disease, the idea of heavy lockdown was to slow down the spread of infection and give time for the administration to prepare adequate healthcare facilities. Prevention remains the only option against the virus with vaccines still being researched and the standard drug therapy unavailable,” he added.

The longer the virus continues without a cure, the more pressure will be on individuals, systems and nations to change and adapt. When social normalcy is restored, there is bound to be a surge of transmission and an increase in patients requiring hospital care.

“The highly contagious virus has not disappeared and we are in the delicate and dangerous stage of the Coronavirus outbreak. To further avoid the exponential rise of the infection one needs to be responsible. Each of us is now responsible for the others,” the doctor said.

The understanding of this infectious disease and its prevention is different than compared to 1919 Influenza pandemic and most of the countries face the same challenge with COVID-19. Two strategies — suppression and mitigation — are important to combat the disease. While suppression is to reduce the viral reproduction, mitigation is to reduce the human to human transmission, he said.

The task is uphill and every citizen should play a role in this war against the pandemic. Being responsible is to restrict travel, wear masks, hand hygiene, cough etiquette, social distancing, impose strict curbs on public activity would help in a long way to slow done the highly infectious disease. The individuals who have symptoms or confused about the ailments should seek opinion of the doctors, get tested and follow the recommendations.