Many countries have announced to lockdown since the pandemic of COVID-19. This condition forced the WHO to declare an emergency situation and all parties must do prevention in holding further spread. However, there are still people who don’t really know what is COVID-19 and how is it spread rapidly. Thus, they keep going outside instead of staying at home just like most people campaign today.
If you don’t know how critical the situation is, then you must open your eyes to the number of how many people that have been infected. Based on the last updated report on WHO’s site, it shows more than one million two hundred confirmed cases around the world.
Also, more than half of those number is death. This number is still increasing day by day, whether for the suspected or the dead ones. In order to get a deep understanding of COVID-19 and it’s spreading wider to other countries, then you should see the discussion below.
What is COVID-19?
In answering the question, we should begin by knowing its concept. The COVID-19 is an infectious disease to someone’s respiratory caused by a coronavirus. Actually, this virus is one of the family viruses which exists in animals. When the virus jumps to humans, it will cause cold-like symptoms.
Seeing the early symptoms seems like the ordinary flu, it makes some cases were late handled. Someone might not consider infected because the first thing comes out could be a fever or a dry cough. Some others get a sore throat, headache, and diarrhea, but the rest feels nothing at all. In fact, this one is dangerous. Studies have suggested that people without any symptoms could be the carrier of the virus.
Talking about COVID-19, we cannot separate the discussion from SARS and MERS. The two are other coronaviruses which had been an outbreak several years ago. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) swept in 2002 until 2003. Around 8,000 people were infected and more than 800 people were killed caused by SARS.
Meanwhile, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in 2012 killed 900 people from around 2,500 cases. However, both cases were from a different kind of coronavirus, so it was easier to control.
The spectrum of COVID-19 is wider than the virus caused by SARS and MERS. This coronavirus attacks a various range of ages and populations. Much younger seems to suffer, but the other age groups are less risky. While for the older people, especially those who have pre-existing diseases, like diabetes, hypertension, and others, are potentially be in mortality rate.
How Can It Spread?
Many parties suggested that the coronavirus was originally from the bats. Then, the virus subsequently moved to another animal as the intermediary before spilling into humans. Now, it has already spread to many countries in the world. So, the next thing you must know is the spread of this disease.
1. Coughs or Sneezes
Just like the other flu, someone’s cough or sneeze is the transmission way. The droplets might land on the surface, then the other people have a contact on it. After that, the person touches their mouth, eyes, or nose. It is also possible that the droplets directly land on the skin if someone doesn’t cover their mouth.
This causes someone to get COVID-19 and the virus spread further. That is why you must protect yourself by wearing a mask and washing hands frequently with soap under the flowing water or using a hand sanitizer.
2. Close Contact with the Carrier
You must know that the droplets don’t always come from cough or sneezes. When you are having close contact with someone that actually the carrier, you potentially get the virus.
The virus can move from handshaking, close distance while having a conversation, hugging, and other physical contacts. So, in order to protect yourself, keep within at least two meters distance from one another.
3. Exchange of Things
Remember, the coronavirus will stay on the surface with the droplets. Not many people realize that droplets could be everywhere. Have you ever wondered who just touch the door handling or the side of the escalator? Perhaps, the carrier has just touched it after he or she covered her mouth.
The virus is also possible to move via a credit card or money that you just gave to someone. Things around you can be a vehicle for the virus.
4. People from Infected Area
Human is the best media for the virus to live. As long as the virus exists in a human body, it is able to jump to the other people.
As we mentioned above, someone probably doesn’t feel any symptom. So, they think it is okay to travel outside. When that person meets someone with a low immune, the virus can easily jump. This is the reason why you should stay at home because you never know that you are the carrier or not.
5. Taking Care the Patients
Actually, it is bad news for the world. Because there are so many doctors and nurses who got this disease after taking care of their patients.
Even though they already wear standard protection, they still have the possibility to be transmitted. These health workers are regularly having contact with the suspect and positive patients. Regarding their job, they cannot avoid their responsibility to cure those people.
Now you already know about COVID-19 and how is it spread. If you read until this part, we hope you can be wiser to face recent situations. Please be more aware to keep yourself and around hygiene. Tell someone about this discussion if he or she seems not really understand how critical this issue. Also, keep supporting the people who are being the army to fight this outbreak.
References:
- Adhikari SP, Meng S, Wu YJ, Mao YP, et. al. (2020). Epidemiology, causes, clinical manifestation and diagnosis, prevention and control of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) during the early outbreak period: a scoping review. Infectious Disease of Poverty ISSN: 2049-9957. BioMed Central Ltd. https://idpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40249-020-00646-x. Accessed March 7th 2020.
- https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 (updated April 7, 2020). Accessed March 7th 2020.
- https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52006988. Accessed March 7th 2020.
- https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-diseases-comparing-covid-19-sars-mers-numbers-n1150321. Accessed March 7th 2020.
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/07/what-coronavirus-where-covid-19-came-from/. Accessed March 7th 2020.
- https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1. Accessed March 7th 2020.
