COVID19: Preventive and Protective Control Management Strategies

COVID-19 was identified as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. The uncontrolled transmission of COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease-2019) in almost 215 countries has posed a serious health issue among the world population. Cases of COVID-19 have emerged from the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, South China, in December 2019 and have been rapidly spreading throughout the world since then. In this chapter, we have tried to extract data from various research reports, WHO guidelines, and other published articles to summarize the prevention strategies for COVID-19. This disease causes varying degrees of illness in patients like fever, cough, sore throat, breathlessness, fatigue, and other related symptoms. There are no drugs or other therapeutics presently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent or treat COVID-19. Current clinical management includes infection prevention, control measures, and supportive care through anti-viral, anti-microbial as well as immuno-modulating drugs as first-line treatment, followed by symptomatic treatment and oxygen therapy. Besides drugs, plasma convalescent therapy is being utilized in serious patients, but most of the vaccine candidates developed against SARS-CoV-2 are in the clinical trial stages. It is necessary to identify the potential cases as early as possible and isolate the vulnerable population from the confirmed cases of COVID-19, to prevent the potential transmission of infection to healthy people, other patients, and health care staff. Early protection, early identification, early diagnosis, and early isolation are crucial to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Improved personal protection and hygiene management at community levels should be officially endorsed to protect the population from infections. Proper arrangement of medical resources (i.e., oxygen supply, ventilators, PPE kits, gloves, sanitizer) can prevent the crucial damage caused by the disease. Another pressing need of the hour is to promptly discriminate patients with COVID-19 from other febrile diseases. Thus, the need of the hour is to develop rapid and accurate diagnostic technologies that can help the world to win the war against such viral pandemics.

Keywords: Breathlessness, COVID-19, Oxygen supply, Preventive strategies, SARS-CoV-2, Ventilators.