Facing the various strains of the coronavirus family is not a new thing to the world population. The world has already suffered from the impact of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) outbreak, in 2002,
when more than 8000 people have suffered from the disease and 778 deaths were recorded. Similarly, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) has spread out from Saudi Arabia to 27 countries, including Korea during the period of 3 months, in 2015, during which the disease has led to approximately 200 clinically confirmed cases and 36 deaths in Korea alone. And now the world is up against Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), which, according to the WHO, has reached 102,584,351 clinically confirmed cases and 2,222,647 deaths worldwide, on 1 February 2021, since its first case that occurred on 31 December 2019. With the immense impact of these biological hazards with pandemic potential, prevention started to clearly manifest itself as a key factor in solving the issue.
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There is a clear pattern in public behavior during the timeline of the infectious outbreaks. After the initial discovery of an outbreak, the public expresses an initial negligence and preventive measures deficiency. Moreover, with the presence of asymptomatic cases, the rapid spread of the disease starts to occur and suspected cases became more difficult to track. These behaviors typically lead to an increase in the initial surge of infections. In the case of COVID-19, this is critical as the virus has more spreadability compared to the earlier viral outbreaks. Adding to the less perceived threat in a primary surge of an outbreak, a primary public and/or later chaos tend to occur due to the lack of knowledge of the disease pathology and roots of transmission.
In the hospital setting, a similar situation of negligence might also occur and lead to the lack of primary infection control measures. Researchers found that the lack of knowledge of viral infection clinical symptoms, and delay in identifying an outbreak, and the isolation of infected people, were all connected to the delay. This resulted in an increase in workplace-associated transmission of the infection to patients and hospital staff. Later on, healthcare workers suffered not only from fear and distress from contracting the virus after the first wave, but they also had to face stigma.
In the absence of proper guidelines for the healthcare workers on what to do and how to protect them, they have been led towards potential fear and chaos.
The capacity of countries to respond to COVID-19 has to be linked with both the people and hospitals’ preparedness. In a developed country such as Singapore, with the surge response capacity, plus the guidelines for doctors and up-to-date information on how to early diagnose and treat a COVID-19 has been really helpful in mitigating and improving disease prognosis. On the contrary, the status of COVID-19 in developing countries such as Yemen and in Africa might not be the same, which indicates the importance of continuous support of one-health approach to ensure health equality, about which the WHO’s Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated in his visions and priorities.
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Better public and hospital preparedness is, therefore, a necessity. It is very imperative that, in the hospitals, emphasis should be put on reducing the initial surge and minimize its health impact on hospital occupants and staffs. A systematic review found that proper planning, training and education, and increased capacity are some of the main important factors for better mitigation and response to the outbreak. The CDC guidelines have divided health staff in 3levels of categories according to their exposure to COVID-19 and advised to follow exclusion from work for 14 days for high and some medium category health staffs. Therefore, it’s really important to empower and educate health staff so that they could be responsive to the biological disaster and deal with accompanied stress via preparedness training. This measure will result in the increased capacity of hospitals to maintain patients flow with the earlier implementation of preventive measures.
As for the public, increased awareness and surveillance can play an active role to prevent the further spread of COVID-19 or any possible future outbreaks. Moreover, normalizing the idea of quarantine and increasing the public capacity to adopt preventive measures, such as social distancing and hand wash, and avoid closed crowded areas are also important in handling the situation in a better way. In addition, empowering the public to adapt and understand measures that prove its effectiveness such as isolation and quarantine would help in fastening the community recovery of the outbreak.
In conclusion, the lesson learned from the past experiences with coronavirus families indicates the value of prevention and draws a path to efficiently build public and hospital preparedness capacities. Preventive measures, such as continuous public sensitivity analysis and increased public self-protection are actions that can be adopted in both developed and developing countries. In addition, training that helps healthcare workers become more aware of a possible outbreak, in turn, helps in early diagnosing, isolating and tracking symptomatic and asymptomatic cases. It will help in the proper implementation of needed actions and use of personal protective equipment when it is necessary. The use of technology to avid crowd in hospitals is another major step towards the mitigation, such as tele-consultation or telemedicine, etc. As a result, it will help in improving not only a country’s health condition but also achieving global health laws.
