Understanding the challenges of COVID-19

The outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) started in Wuhan city of China at the end of 2019 but it is travelling around the globe, infecting countries, one after another, and arresting people at the individual level. Initial assessment of COVID-19 regarding the transmission and potency was very sloppy. Though often information was released from China, it really could not convince people outside China about the nature of this pathogen. As a result, significant delays observed in taking necessary steps in countries other than China against COVID-19. When it turned to be a monster, it was late for many countries to protect the people.

Globally, experts could not predict how contagious COVID-19 might be and what population would be the most vulnerable. Amidst all of these confusions, COVID-19 has been very successful to establish as a pandemic for the world. COVID-19 has been very successful and part of the reason is that experts initially thought asymptomatic individuals are not posing the risk of spreading infection. This finally came up as a big mistake where more than 20% of cases could be asymptomatic and can spread infection.

Initial diagnosis of COVID-19 infection is done by mouth/nasal swabs based on a PCR test to detect the presence of viral RNA. Unfortunately, this method is very expensive and requires biosafety level 3 to prepare samples. Under this circumstance, most countries failed to perform early diagnosis and when they performed, it was restricted to only symptomatic individuals. Though positive individuals were isolated, asymptomatic individuals kept spreading infection. This was the major turning point to make this infection into a global pandemic and resulted in the formation of lots of epicentres.

COVID-19 infection around the world is a huge challenge. The most effective strategy to contain this infection is home quarantine. Home quarantine or 'shelter in place' regardless of the status of any individual either infected or not should set their mind and exercise immediately. Any government that has not started to instruct people, individuals must do it on their own will. This must be for 3 weeks or longer if not doing simultaneously.

Bangladesh is already experiencing COVID-19 wave and passed the initial phase. At this point forward, it is extremely important to follow 'staying at home' order without a second thought. Any deviation will likely result in the formation of a COVID-19 epicentre, which means likely to see the human cluster of infection in places around the country. If that happens it would be just out of control, same as any country around the world.

The writer is a Researcher of Molecular Immunology at the National Institute of Health, USA.

E-mail: jubayer1993@gmail.com