COVID-19: When should Authorities Recommend Social Distancing and Total Lockdown?
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By Francis M. Malwal, Houston, Texas, USA
Wednesday, May 13 2020 (PW) — According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC, 2020), social distancing, also know as physical distancing means keeping pace between yourself and people out of your home. A lockdown is defined as one of an emergency protocol enforces by the authorities that prevent people from leaving a given area.
A full lockdown means the people in the given area must stay where they are and must not exit or enter a building in a given area. In this article, I will discuss the reasons, and when the authorities should enforce social distancing and lockdown.
Social distancing reduces the spread of coronavirus and protects healthcare facilities. Both Sympotic and asymptomatic patients spread coronavirus. Most of the time, the symptomatic cases are tested and then isolated from the community either through self-isolation or quarantine.
However, asymptomatic case identification is quite challenging, and their tracing is not cost-effective. Therefore, the most effective way to reduce asymptotic patients from spreading the infection is by enforcing social distancing.
To practice social distancing, stay at least two meters away from others, stay out of the crowd, and avoid mass gatherings such as a funeral, clubs, and beaches. Also, studies have shown that limiting face-to-face contact with others is the best way to reduce the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).
Because we don’t know who has the virus and who has not, so everybody becomes a suspect case for COVID-19, so if we maintain social distancing, the number of cases will spread out over a more extended period and hence preventing COVID-19 cases surpassing healthcare facility capacity. To sum up, social distancing reduces the spread of the virus and pressure on healthcare facility resources.
Lockdown significantly slows down the outbreak and flatten the curve. If the social distancing failed to curb the epidemic, then the next step is a partial or total lockdown depending on the level of the threat. Following the alarming rise of coronavirus in Wuhan, china declared a complete lockdown of Wuhan and other provinces around it.
Just within two months of lockdown, the number of infections and deaths sharply declined (BI Indian Beaure, 2020). Following this, the lockdown became a model for other countries to control the spread of coronavirus. In summary, lockdown reduces incidence and fatality cases and flatten the curve.
In conclusion, social distancing should compulsorily be enforced as long as the country still reports new cases. However, lockdown would be unnecessary as long as the country has no significant and severe cases that necessitate hospitalization or lead to death.
The author, Francis M. Malwal (B.Pharm. M.Pharm. FPGEC), is a South Sudanese pharmacist based in Houston, Texas, USA and can be reached via his email: E.mail.francismalwal@gmail.com
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