Md Shafiqur Rahman
Pandemic of COVID-19 control and prevention needs the attention of the total global community, which is not an easy task. Global leaders, organizations and philanthropists have to come forward collaboratively to tackle the pandemic and to overcome its direct and/or indirect consequences.
Looking retrospectively at the current COVID-19 pandemic, several sequential phases are observed: sylvatic phase, latency phase, amplification phase, epidemic phase, and lastly the pandemic phase. Paying attention to only pandemic phase is not enough, it requires attention to all the phases simultaneously depending on which phase a locality or country is. To this effect a way to deal with COVID-19 is suggested.
Sylvatic phase, the inter-species infection in ecological reservoir like bat and pangolin, started in Wuhan of China. To reduce the risk of reemergence within the ecological reservoir, in Wuhan and in any other suspected countries, organizing wet markets with ban on wildlife trade, and control of animal farms need to be undertaken.
During the latency phase accidental emergence from unknown sources of sylvatic phase may lead to stochastic invisible latent infection in human population. It is quite impossible to detect or contain the disease at this stage, but by leaving undisturbed the wildlife ecology, human to wildlife contact may be minimized to decrease latent infection.
Next, the close contacts of those with stochastic invisible latent infection create an amplification loop whereby the infection multiplies and spreads among humans – amplification phase. This amplification loop needs to be eliminated to contain the infection below the threshold level by structural organization and control of markets and other major social events.
When the threshold level of amplification phase is exceeded, the epidemic phase begins. Human movement for travel, trade and commerce, tourism… spills over the disease/infection to other areas within a country with more and more people being infected. Individual country has to take control measures through identification and treatment of cases, and contact tracing for quarantine or isolation.
Intercountry movement of people then scales up the disease to spread worldwide – the pandemic phase. Intensive epidemic control measures taken in each country contributes to overall control of pandemic. In addition to these pandemic control measures, world leaders, organizations, and philanthropists need to come forward to work out modalities to combat concurrent and aftereffects of COVID-19.
The focused attention to control the COVID-19 pandemic need now to broaden to overcome the interrupted trade and commerce, intercountry relationship, tourism, international labor market, stock market…and so forth. If few countries are able to control COVID-19 within their geographical limits, it would help the country to pay attention to internal economic activities, but it would still not be back to normalcy unless the total world community gets back to normalcy.
Organizations and international players like World Trade Organization (WTO), International Labor Organization (ILO), International Air Transport Association (IATA), International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), various other bodies of United Nations (UN)… need to work in collaboration to bring things to normalcy.
Pandemic of COVID-19 control and prevention needs the attention of the total global community, which is not an easy task. Global leaders, organizations and philanthropists have to come forward collaboratively to tackle the pandemic and to overcome its direct and/or indirect consequences.
Looking retrospectively at the current COVID-19 pandemic, several sequential phases are observed: sylvatic phase, latency phase, amplification phase, epidemic phase, and lastly the pandemic phase. Paying attention to only pandemic phase is not enough, it requires attention to all the phases simultaneously depending on which phase a locality or country is. To this effect a way to deal with COVID-19 is suggested.
Sylvatic phase, the inter-species infection in ecological reservoir like bat and pangolin, started in Wuhan of China. To reduce the risk of reemergence within the ecological reservoir, in Wuhan and in any other suspected countries, organizing wet markets with ban on wildlife trade, and control of animal farms need to be undertaken.
During the latency phase accidental emergence from unknown sources of sylvatic phase may lead to stochastic invisible latent infection in human population. It is quite impossible to detect or contain the disease at this stage, but by leaving undisturbed the wildlife ecology, human to wildlife contact may be minimized to decrease latent infection.
Next, the close contacts of those with stochastic invisible latent infection create an amplification loop whereby the infection multiplies and spreads among humans – amplification phase. This amplification loop needs to be eliminated to contain the infection below the threshold level by structural organization and control of markets and other major social events.
When the threshold level of amplification phase is exceeded, the epidemic phase begins. Human movement for travel, trade and commerce, tourism… spills over the disease/infection to other areas within a country with more and more people being infected. Individual country has to take control measures through identification and treatment of cases, and contact tracing for quarantine or isolation.
Intercountry movement of people then scales up the disease to spread worldwide – the pandemic phase. Intensive epidemic control measures taken in each country contributes to overall control of pandemic. In addition to these pandemic control measures, world leaders, organizations, and philanthropists need to come forward to work out modalities to combat concurrent and aftereffects of COVID-19.
The focused attention to control the COVID-19 pandemic need now to broaden to overcome the interrupted trade and commerce, intercountry relationship, tourism, international labor market, stock market…and so forth. If few countries are able to control COVID-19 within their geographical limits, it would help the country to pay attention to internal economic activities, but it would still not be back to normalcy unless the total world community gets back to normalcy.
Organizations and international players like World Trade Organization (WTO), International Labor Organization (ILO), International Air Transport Association (IATA), International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), various other bodies of United Nations (UN)… need to work in collaboration to bring things to normalcy.
[Md Shafiqur Rahman, PhD, was an Associate Professor of Community Medicine and is currently working as a Consultant in the Directorate General of Health Services of Bangladesh; cellphone: +88 01783932240; e-mail: [email protected]]
