Strategies to cope with COVID-19 pandemic and priorities for assistance in low testing capacity countries (original) (raw)

Saving Lives and Livelihoods in the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Have We Learned, Particularly from Asia?

Asian Economic Papers

The key practices in successful government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are (1) early border controls to contain the initial spread of the virus from abroad; (2) rapidly increasing the capacity of national health systems in terms of mobilizing staff, securing supplies (e.g., protective equipment and respiratory devices), and optimizing space (e.g., ensuring adequate numbers of acute and intensive care beds) to scale up testing-tracing-treating infrastructure; (3) promoting individual hygienic behavior such as social distancing and face mask use, which requires, respectively, active government enforcement of regulations against holding spreader events, and strong government intervention in the market to ensure adequate supplies; (4) fiscal measures to extend disaster relief to workers, businesses, and vulnerable populations; and (5) clear, concise, and consistent communications from leaders and authorities. International cooperation must have a key role in the fight against the...

Can we Stem the Covid-19 Pandemic: Shaping the Future

Anaesthesia & Critical Care Medicine Journal , 2020

The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic is the defining global health crisis of our time and the greatest challenge we are facing. The virus has spread to all countries except Antarctica. As of 17 August 2020 2020, more than 22,113,000 people have been infected, and over 778,530 people have lost their lives. The global spread of the virus has overwhelmed health systems, and caused widespread social and economic disruption. Putting societies and economies on hold (lockdown) has helped to limit some of the short-term impacts of the virus. The faster all cases are found, tested and isolated, the harder we make it for this virus to spread. This strategy will save lives and mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic. This pandemic requires a whole-of-government and whole-of-society response. This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and may never go away. Even if a vaccine was found, coping with the disease would require a massive effort. Countries are racing to slow the spread of the virus by testing and treating patients, carrying out contact tracing, limiting travel, quarantining citizens, and cancelling large gatherings. Educational institutions are closed. COVID-19 has the potential to create devastating social, economic and political crises that will leave deep scars. Every day, people are losing jobs and income, with no way of knowing when normality will return. The financial crisis is already having a severe impact on poverty and inequality. The informal sector, a large employer in many EMs, has been highly vulnerable to the lockdowns and demand drops caused by the pandemic. Millions of workers who have abruptly lost jobs and incomes need urgent attention. Currently, there is no vaccine available and there are few specific antiviral strategies. Several potent candidates of antivirals and repurposed drugs are under urgent investigation. There is an urgent need to increase pooled sample testing and also start undertaking anti-body testing. Life and livelihood are crucial. The lockdown must be rolled back in a phased and staggered manner while ensuring that high risk groups are encouraged to stay home. Strict social distancing norms, use of face masks and hyperlocalization to contain hotspots and areas of high risk should be the way forward.

CHALLENGES TO THE EFFECTIVE PREVENTION AND CONTROL OF COVID-19 IN LOW INCOME COUNTRIES

Academia Letters, 2021

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a pandemic which has set the world into panic. The disease is caused by SARS-Cov-2 (1). It is a contagious and a respiratory disease spread via droplets from coughs, sneezes and sputum from an infected). As a result of the global and rapid spread of the virus, the disease was declared as a pandemic on March 11th by the World Health Organization (WHO). With the low testing rate of the virus in low income countries, it is feared that the number can be much higher. This number is likely going to increase over the period as effective vaccines for its cure has not yet been developed to prevent the spread of this disease which has led the world with a major concern to how to handle the disease. As the case of China, the public health response to COVID-19 showed that it was possible to contain COVID-19 even without vaccines if the governments used the public health outbreak responses such as isolation, quarantine, lock down and social distancing (2). However, various challenges have been noticed with regards to the implementation of some of these measures in low income countries. Such challenges include; i) Rumours or misinformation of the disease in the social media The social media is a good platform to spread information as fast as possible to a wide range of audience all over the world but this effort is being defeated by many of those who abuse

COVID-19: through the eyes through the front line, an international perspective

Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control, 2020

COVID-19 is continuing to ravage the globe. In many Western Countries, the populous has not embraced public health advice which has resulted in a resurgence of the COVID-19 virus. In the United States, there is an absence of a coordinated Federal response. Instead, frontline workers and average citizens are having to cope with extensive mixed messaging regarding mask usage and social distancing from the highest levels of government. This has resulted in the United States not being able to achieve a low level of infection since the pandemic began. In addition, many citizens hold a profound belief that individual freedoms must be preserved, even at the expense of public health; and view the wearing of masks as renouncing this right. These engrained political beliefs can be traced back to the late 1800s. The response of the United States has also been hampered by a highly cost-efficient healthcare system, which does not provide universal care and has a just-in-time supply chain, with f...

Containment Strategies for COVID-19 Pandemic

The exploratory study reported here investigated the manner in which different countries have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the largely unknown and dangerous virus SARS-CoV-2. Based on studying still limited and evolving evidence, a model of pandemic containment strategy was created. In an initial validation, the model was able to differentiate between three strategies of containing COVID-19-Restrictive, Permissive, and Hybrid. The article frames a pandemic containment strategy as a mediator between pandemic causes and consequences, along with a capability of the health system and a government's response time. Cultural assumptions behind different strategies are also discussed. Implications for further research and for practice are outlined.

Future Global Pandemic Management: Lessons from the COVID-19 Crisis

Sphinx journal of Pharmaceutical and Medical Sciences, 2022

The history of this planet is full of Pandemics, that have repeatedly influenced the path of medical care and effectively inspired a big deal of vaccination science as well as introducing new codes of hygiene measures, social responsibility and even economic responses and charts. The Covid-19 pandemic was, in this regard, no exception. Despite that an end of the pandemic is not anticipated in near vision, yet a number of lessons from the poor quality of crisis management whether globally or locally, are already there. The WHO imposed a number of indices to predict and help decision makers to control the disease. None of these proved to be enough as a single criteria for community based decisions, or interventional measures implementation. In this article we are going to discuss lessons from Covid-19 crisis from the authors" point of view. Taking into consideration the progression of pandemic in many countries and the related measures taken.

COVID-19 across Countries: Situation and Lessons for Pandemic control

Journal of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences

In the context of rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 pandemic, many facts and issues are coming up. Some are general across borders while some others specific to particular context. We intend to review situation (condition, trend) and lessons (observations, and messages) from 9 different countries across the continents (in brief as contributed by respective authors). We have, here, the accounts and observations from Nepal, India, Japan (Asia); Norway and United Kingdom (Europe); United States of America (North America), Ecuador (South America), Australia and South Africa. General fact is that all need to maintain social distancing, adequate testing, aggressive contact tracing and treatment along with strategies to limit movements and crowds (e.g. lockdown). This pandemic has again shown that there is no border for disaster and pestilence. Borders are artificial. We all human being and whole world is a single unit. We have certain weaknesses, drawbacks and deficits as well as strengt...