ABSTRACT
COVID-19 is an infective disease which is caused by a newly discovered coronavirus, causing a global pandemic. Most of the people who fall sick with this virus will generally face low to moderate mild respiratory illness and recover without any requirement for treatment. On the other hand, older people, and persons who are facing underlying health issues, like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory problems, and cancer, are more badly affected, often resulting in serious illness, because of their very low power of resistance. One of the best ways to avoid this pandemic infection is to maintain social distancing; to ‘stay home and stay safe’ is the best policy one can do in the present scenario. We have to protect ourselves from infection by washing our hands frequently for 20 seconds each time, using sanitizers, and we should not touch our face with unwashed hands. This coronavirus spreads mainly through saliva droplets of a person when s/he splits publicly or through a person who coughs or sneezes through the nose, droplets passing through the air in a fraction of seconds to achieve person-to-person transmission. The life span of this coronavirus is 8 hours and it can travel up to 4 meters up in the air. It takes 14–21 days to detect whether a person has been infected by the coronavirus. A person found to be infected by COVID-19 is sent to an isolation ward for a primary health check-up, before being sent to a quarantine ward for treatment under specialized environments by doctors, if found to be COVID-positive. A track record (electronic health record) of each individual patient is maintained separately during this quarantine period, which consists of the medical treatment of the patient followed by the nurse every hour, as indicated by the doctor. The symptoms of this disease, namely high fever, severe headache, respiratory problems, and running nose, are some of the observed features of the infected person. After 21 days of quarantine, if the patient has recovered, s/he will be sent home. As there is no specific treatment for COVID-19, we must follow all the precautions as directed by the doctors in order to protect ourselves from the present pandemic situation. Some countries, such as the USA, Italy and Spain, are trying to identify pharmaceuticals to treat the infection, and clinical trials are being carried out on volunteers in some countries. The latest information is being updated hourly and maintained by the WHO.
