Last Updated on: 20th April 2021, 09:43 pm
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted over more than 100 countries worldwide and it is spreading very rapidly.
- What are the symptoms of the coronavirus latest updates when you receive it?
- How do these cold and cough symptoms differ?
- How easily does it spread and how deadly can it be for you?
- How do governments and countries around the world react?
- How is the Pakistani government reacting to this pandemic situation?
- Why is India so important next week?
- What are Dos and Dont’s in this difficult situation?
Come on, let’s discuss all this information in this article today.
In early February, the Coronavirus was only spread in China. There were around 25,000 cases and around 500 victims.
There have been more than 275,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths worldwide. There were also more than 90,000 restores and the virus had not been identified.
Scientists, now called the new coronavirus, have called it SARS-CoV-2 because this virus is very similar to the SARS virus that was common in 2003 and is therefore known as the SARS-CoV-2 and the disease caused by this virus was named COVID-19.
The spread of this coronavirus has blocked cities around the world to curb its spread. Schools, restaurants, shops, cinemas, gyms, and air travel are all closed, and the exact reasons for this are explained later, why this is so important.
First, let’s talk about the symptoms:
All cases in China have been analyzed by doctors and researchers to find out the exact symptoms of COVID-19 and the differences between colds and flu.
Their analysis found that fever is mandatory in COVID-19. 88% of cases have a fever and only 68% of cases have a dry cough.
Fatigue occurs in 38% of the cases and breathlessness in 18% of the cases. Keeping with this in mind, you can assume that if you have a fever or dry cough, chances are that COVID-19 is quite high.
But do consider that researchers are still confused about the exact symptoms of COVID-19. Note coronavirus is different from the common cold.
However, the nasal discharge factor in COVID-19 was only observed in 5% of the cases. So if you have a runny nose, you can relax. This means that there is a high probability that you will have a cold and not COVID-19.
Difficulty breathing is a big difference compared to the flu. If you have difficulty breathing, this is a symptom of COVID-19. No symptom of cold or influenza.
In the above table, you can see exactly what symptoms are different between COVID-19, cold and flu. Another important thing regarding the coronavirus symptoms that the World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated is that they are only mild. The symptoms are visible in 80% of COVID-19 cases. That said, 80% of people who have been infected with COVID-19 do not have much pain. Your bodies will recover on their own without doing anything.
Severe symptoms are visible in 14% of COVID-19 cases, and 4.7% of cases require critical care and need to be hospitalized. In all other cases, deaths can occur.
In general, it can take an average of 5 to 6 days for symptoms to appear in your body. But it’s contagious in 5 to 6 days. You have contracted the infection while assuming that you are healthy, fit and disease-free, but you can also pass the infection on to others. This makes COVID-19 extremely dangerous.
The symptoms are not visible in humans and they go out and interact with other people and transmit the disease.
If we divide the total number of deaths by the total number of cases worldwide, this number would now increase to around 4%.
However, experts still believe that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is only around 2%, as there are many cases that are not reported. There are many countries where we ask people to only be tested if symptoms are visible.
Although, we have found that in many cases only mild symptoms are visible and many people are rejected by the tests because there is insufficient evidence in the case of China. It was found that deaths occurred in 15% of the cases when the age was over 80 years. You can check this table here:
There is this age group from 10 to 39 years, in which deaths only occurred in 0.2% of the cases. It is now clear that COVID-19 is more lethal to the elderly. The same diagram can be seen for different health problems.
We see that deaths occurred in 10% of cases with cardiovascular disease. People who already have diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer are more likely to die from COVID-19. Some other interesting conclusions emerge from country-to-country mortality rates.
For example, in Germany, where 16,000 cases have occurred, there were only 44 deaths. The mortality rate is simply 0.27%. If we observe this in the UK as well, the mortality rate is 4.4%. In Italy, mortality rates have reached 8.3%.
So you can see how many people actually died from the reported cases. There is a big difference between this from country to country.
Germany and South Korea Success
It is difficult to determine the exact reason for this, but experts have given their opinion that why this is happening.
In the case of Germany, the three main reasons were given. The first reason is that 70% of cases of coronaviruses occur in young people in Germany, the age group from 20 to 50 years and these people were gone to spend their skiing holidays in Italy.
These were the first people to bring the infection to Germany, and most cases occurred among young people. Since young people have better chances of survival, their fatality & mortality rate is low.
The second reason given by a German virologist was: Test, Test, and Test. Germany took tests very seriously and tested on a very large number of ordinary people, and the third reason is said to be the good health system of Germany.
The availability of hospital beds in Germany as compared to other countries much better. If you look at the hospital beds in European countries for every hundred thousand inhabitants, Germany is with 823 hospital beds and Germany comes first with 331 beds and Italy in the last.
South Korea is another example that has successfully stemmed the spread of COVID-19. The same reasons were explained behind it. There is a sufficient number of hospital beds there and a large scale of testing. Infected people were kept isolated and the country responded very quickly. The example of South Korea was so great that the number of daily cases has decreased.
The coronavirus case graph in South Korea is declining. If you compare the graph of the total number of COVID-19 tests with country, South Korea is number 1, Germany number 2, and it is pretty clear that if we want to limit the spread of this virus, then the no. of tests should be increased in our country.
According to the latest information, this virus is mainly transmitted through personal contact. If you’re in close contact (i.e. around 6 feet) with an infected person then you have a good chance of getting the virus.
Another source is the respiratory droplets. If an infected person coughs or sneezes, if the breath drops that come out to get into your nose or mouth, you can also get the infection.
And if these breath droplets remain in the air, the virus can survive in the air for three hours. If they fall on a surface, this virus can survive one day in cardboard and the virus in plastic and steel for up to three days.
If you have ordered a package for delivery from China then some people were too scared in advance, there is no reason to be afraid because, as I said, it doesn’t survive more than a day.
R0 Value i.e. reproduction rate tells us the Reproduction rate of the virus. R0 means how many more people will infect by an infected person on average.
Even now it is estimated that the R0 value of this novel virus is 2-3. On average, one person infects two or three people. Compared to many other diseases, it is quite low, but compared to the flu, the R0 value of the flu is 1.3, which is many times higher than the SARS virus that spread in 2003. It had a similar R0 value, if not more.
But this virus did not spread beyond China and Southeast Asia. For some reason, the world has been successful in controlling it, and now it has failed to control the novel coronavirus.
Because of this virus, experts speak of maintaining social distancing nowadays, i.e. avoid leaving your home and when you leave your home, keep your distance from other people. Keep a distance of about 6 to 7 feet so that it does not come into close contact with them and the infection does not spread.
Could you think you are healthy and how much it affects you? Anyway, I’m very young, so my chances of dying from this virus are slim, so I’m going out. It does not concern me. I want to show you an example and if everyone practiced social distancing, how much would this affect the spread of the virus? This is a very interesting simulation from the Washington Post.
Think of every point as a person. A blue dot means a healthy person. A brown dot stands for an infected person and a pink dot for a person who has recovered.
In the graph you can see above, the x-axis represents the time in which the y-axis represents the total number of people infected. So you can see how the virus spreads when people interact with each other. The number of people infected increases, you will see that over time all older people became infected and then recovered.
Now look at the same example if everyone practices social distancing from each other, i.e. if they don’t leave their homes, the point does not move, it remains stable. You will notice that these dots interact less, come into less contact with another and the graphs slowly increases over time, the number of infected people slowly increases and the time extends.
Now compare the two graphs. One graph resembles a mountain and the other resembles a small hill. If you look at the maximum points of these graphs, you will see the number of people infected at that time. There are many more infected people (on the diagram) without social distancing and at this point the number of hospital beds. it is restricted in our cities and countries. Therefore, we can draw an intermediate line that relates to the capacity of our health system at a certain point in time.
If more than this number of people want to go to the hospital, our health system cannot maintain them. There will be a shortage of hospitals and hospital beds. So this will happen without social distancing. There will come a time when so many infected people come in and there are not enough hospital beds available for people who can be saved so as not to be saved.
This is called flattening the curve, and this is the exact reason why COVID-19 became such a big crisis in Italy. The government there was not ready. The number of infected people increased so drastically that space was lacking in hospitals. There were not enough hospital beds.
Today, the situation is so pitiful that doctors have to decide which patient should be treated first, while there is only one hospital bed where I can only take care of one that I need to prioritize. You should take this person because the other person is more likely to die. These are avoidable deaths.
This is the reason why other countries have taken the example of Italy and learned from it. And now countries around the world have taken more social distancing measures. Public places are closed. People are told to stay at home. New hospitals are being built. Stadiums will be converted to hospitals to ensure adequate availability of hospital beds.
Self Quarantine (Staying at Home)
And this is the reason why our government announced a “Self Quarantine (#karachilockdown)” today. As a first step, this is a great decision to tell people not to leave homes and to quarantine themselves.
However, this is only the first step and it will not be enough. I’ve read a lot of messages on social media claiming it’s a stroke. People have been told not to leave their homes for 14 hours, and this virus can only survive for 12 hours, so after 14 hours this virus completely disappears.
The virus is not quarantined for 14 hours. We have to do it for the next 2-3 weeks. as far from home as possible Take as many social distancing measures as possible. The police in France and Italy have punished people for leaving their homes for no reason. Colombia is a South American country that has refused to offer 19-days quarantine to the entire country, even if no coronavirus death has occurred.
It is very good that you prepare yourself beforehand. With regard to these countries, we too must take strict measures. This must be done for the next 2-3 weeks. But at the same time, there is nothing to worry about.
Some people have been so afraid that they have collected all the stocks from the markets as if an apocalypse was breaking out. There is no difference in the food supply.
Different videos have appeared in which you can see people stocking themselves with toilet paper. This is pure stupidity. Steps are being taken to enable our health care system to maintain the number of people infected so that care is available to everyone who needs it at the right time. It can take up to a year for the COVID 19 Vaccine to arrive.
Efforts are being made to control its spread. Angela Merkel, the head of state of Germany, has stated that around 40-70% of the German population can be infected with this virus if they take no action, even though the mortality rate is so low.
If a large number of the population is infected, the deaths we see can be g = hundreds of thousands or even millions. That is why the slow down is so important.
Some people claim that the spread of the virus due to the heat will be limited with the beginning of summer, but the WHO claims that we shouldn’t have any false hopes for it.
Although some research has shown that with each 1-degree rise in temperature, a certain percentage of the spread of this virus is reduced.
Due to the coronavirus directly, and also due to the closure of cities & public spaces, people can’t able to go to their workplaces. This will have an economic impact on the global economy that has not been seen in centuries. Governments have already said that they will pay wages to people who cannot go to work.
Governments will prevent companies from going bankrupt and closing. In many European countries, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and even the United States, billions of dollars in state funds have been raised to help protect people from their economic impact. Politics are changing worldwide. The right-wing parties have spoken about a left-wing policy that would give people money and it will be in the hands of the consumer.
That’s it for today’s article. Share it, If you would like to support my writings so that I can continue to create more informational and educational articles for you.
Thank you for reading this article and don’t forget to wash your hands as washing your hands is one of the most important preventive measures you can take to protect yourself from COVID 19.
“Wash your hands properly and wash your hands for 30-60 seconds.”
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