Covid -19: Preventive Measures can make the difference
Abrar Yousuf Mir
Currently, the whole world is dealing with one of the most severe pandemics ever seen in history. The first case was reported in Wuhan, China (December 2019). The world health organization (WHO) first named this disease as coronavirus disease 19 (Covid-19), caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)and later as “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2” (SARS-CoV-2).
The prime protection from the disease advised was, wearing a face mask, maintaining distance, and washing hands frequently with soap. With the hard work of researchers and other contributing stakeholders across the globe, different vaccines came into existence.
In India, Bharat Biotech came up with the Covaxin vaccine with an efficacy rate of 81%. On January 16- 2021, the world’s most extensive vaccination program against SARS-CoV-2 started in all states of India, primarily; healthcare and other frontline workers were immunized.
So far 60 million doses have been administered to people above the age of 60, with the spike of new cases from last one month, in different states of India, including union territory, Jammu and Kashmir is a matter of concern. The reason is new and highly infectious double mutant covid variant first reported in the United Kingdom and now in India. This strain can complicate our battle against this dreadful virus and may render vaccines less effective against viruses.
In Jammu and Kashmir (UT), on average, 30-60 cases are reported with moderate to severe conditions. The threefold increase in the number of new cases indicates that J&K faces the second wave of the said disease. UT witnessed the first case on March 9-2020 in the valley followed by a Rapid spike, and then, the decline was observed after immediate imposition of lockdown and other preventive measures.
Different studies are being conducted on various aspects of this viral disease throughout the world so we can succeed against it. A study accepted in Journal of Public Health (Springer) available on preprint “Research Square” entitled “SARS-CoV-2 disease in North-western Himalayan region, India: evolution, forecast, and impact of preventive measures” estimated the reproductive number (R0) of SARS-CoV-2 in its first outbreak stage and also predicted new daily cases for the next 90 days using different R0, testing a plausible end of SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.
The concluding remarks of the study are “Here, we indicate positive effects of the preventive measures, as lockdown and social distance, taken in J&K region, showing a stabilization of the growth curves of new cases of SARS-CoV-2, which tends to a substantial decrease over time as the R0 decreases. {R0 of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection}.
The study lays a thrust on the preventive measures (wearing a face mask, maintaining distance, and washing hands frequently with soap, isolation of infected persons, lockdowns) to curb the disease. The authors of the study are from the University of Kashmir (Dr Shiekh Marifatul Haq, Umer Yaqoob), Pacific University Rajasthan (Dr Musheerul Hassan), Federal University of Uberlandia (Dr Rafaela José da Silva), and University of Sao Paulo (Dr Eduardo Soares Calixto).
The article can be visited: https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-40825/v1/3a384761-6340-4241-befb-40606f585854.pdf
(The author is a student at School of Biological sciences, University of Kashmir)
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