First Line of Defence Against Novel CoronaVirus Pandemic
Posted on 24 Feb 2020; 02:00 PM IST. Last Updated: 24 Feb 2020; 02:00 PM IST.Summary: The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) started rolling out of China. This article describes the actions, which could prevent a pandemic.
The novel coronavirus (Covid19), that surfaced in China, did not die out, and as feared by many, it is beginning to roll out of China. This article describes the immediate actions that must be put in place, as first line of defence, against this disease.
Every country, must create a Registry containing the following.
1) An Entry for all people, who visited China, since 01 January 2020.
2) An Entry for all people, who came into contact with Chinese visitors, since 01 January 2020.
All the people in the Registry, must be evaluated and requested to self quarantine for at least 14 days, and monitored for at least 28 days, before they are taken out of the registry. All contacts of the people in the Registry, must be added to the Registry and they too must follow a similar procedure.
The procedure detailed above creates a hierarchy, like first line of contact, second line of contact and so on. This provides a rare opportunity to evaluate, if the subsequent exposures (after the first) are as likely to cause transmission, as the first level of exposure.
Intuitively, it may be argued (without evidence), that the virus must gain foothold in the host, before it can spread. So, a casual exposure to a recently infected person, may not cause transmission of the infection, whereas people who carried the virus, for sufficiently long periods, could infect others, even though they may not display any symptoms yet. This distinction is probably, what was confused as "super spreaders".
The time line, of the infection (again without medical evidence) can be intuitively, sketched as follows.
Exposure ==>
Infected & Non-Symptomatic & Non-Transmittable ==>
Infected & Non-Symptomatic & Transmittable ==>
Infected & Symptomatic*
It is understood that after the disease becomes symptomatic, it is surely transmittable.
If healthcare researchers could establish the average time for each stage of progression, we could easily identify with more certainty, the likelihood of an exposed person catching the disease, and when that person could become a spreader.
In a massive explosive spread, the age old strategy of elimination, could work like a nice drug.