Preparing for community transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus
Dr K K Aggarwal
President CMAAO, HCFI and Past national President IMA
There is explosion of sustained person-to-person community spread in a variety of countries, including South Korea, Italy, Iran, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore.
Previous strategy of containing the disease at the borders may no longer be enough to stop it.
The strategy would then shift from a containment strategy to mitigation.
Community mitigation guidelines
1. The non-pharmaceutical interventions include personal practices, covering coughs and washing hands, as well as community and environmental measures such as surface cleaning.
2. Community measures include social distancing, or limiting contact in face-to-face settings, closing schools, telework or teleschool for children, and recommending "modify, postpone, or cancel mass gatherings.
3. In healthcare system triaging patients, conducting patient visits via telemedicine, and delaying elective surgeries.
4. CDC called on healthcare, education, and business sectors, to start preparing now because when the virus hits the community, it hits quite rapidly.
5. The disruption to everyday life may be severe, but these are things we need to start thinking about right now
6. Commercial labs need to pitch in for testing
7. While the case definition of COVID-19 is still travel-associated, that may change based on information in other countries.
8. We are not sure if community spread of COVID-19 will be mild or severe, but told a reporter it was better to be overprepared than underprepared.
9. The testing criteria may change to testing only symptomatic cases and admitting cases only with breathlessness.
Dr K K Aggarwal
President CMAAO, HCFI and Past national President IMA
There is explosion of sustained person-to-person community spread in a variety of countries, including South Korea, Italy, Iran, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore.
Previous strategy of containing the disease at the borders may no longer be enough to stop it.
The strategy would then shift from a containment strategy to mitigation.
Community mitigation guidelines
1. The non-pharmaceutical interventions include personal practices, covering coughs and washing hands, as well as community and environmental measures such as surface cleaning.
2. Community measures include social distancing, or limiting contact in face-to-face settings, closing schools, telework or teleschool for children, and recommending "modify, postpone, or cancel mass gatherings.
3. In healthcare system triaging patients, conducting patient visits via telemedicine, and delaying elective surgeries.
4. CDC called on healthcare, education, and business sectors, to start preparing now because when the virus hits the community, it hits quite rapidly.
5. The disruption to everyday life may be severe, but these are things we need to start thinking about right now
6. Commercial labs need to pitch in for testing
7. While the case definition of COVID-19 is still travel-associated, that may change based on information in other countries.
8. We are not sure if community spread of COVID-19 will be mild or severe, but told a reporter it was better to be overprepared than underprepared.
9. The testing criteria may change to testing only symptomatic cases and admitting cases only with breathlessness.
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