Why COVID-19 is hitting us now — and how to prepare for the next outbreak

With the COVID-19 pandemic still looming over our heads, it is time to reevaluate our responses to this outbreak. How exactly did we use the previous Ebola Epidemic to our advantage? How do we strengthen our healthcare system? How can we improve our healthcare system from the hard lessons of the past? Allana Shaikh addresses this issue in this Ted Talk.

Alanna Shaikh is a global health consultant who specializes in strengthening health systems and has been working in global health for about twenty years. She specializes in the health systems and how it behaves when faced with severe shocks. She has a vast experience that ranges from evaluation of Ebola centers to avian influenza preparedness. 

This TedTalk was all about the COVID-19 and why this strand of the coronavirus has caused such an uproar recently, and she started her talk by giving a brief explanation of what COVID-19 is all about. A unique characteristic I found about this TedTalk was that, it wasn’t from a patient’s perspective. It wasn’t about how one feels when they have contradicted this virus. It was from a healthcare’s perspective.  Why they reacted the ways they did, and how they had improved from the previous Ebola outbreak. Allana Sheikh ingeniously gave us, the audience, an insight to the entire healthcare system during the pandemic.

COVID-19 is a coronavirus, the seventh coronavirus known. Coronaviruses are a specific subset of virus and they have a specific set of characteristics. One major difference is that they have genetic material made out of RNA rather than DNA. They are also covered in spikes, which they use to invade our cells. An extremely fascinating and interesting point is that Corona means crown and the spikes around the virus made this subset of viruses obtain its name.

COVID-19 causes a range of respiratory symptoms, which is one of the many reasons according to her, as to why it’s so hard to track this outbreak. Its symptoms range from a dry cough to even pneumonia. Plenty of people do get infected by the COVID-19, but their symptoms may be so small and minute, that they don’t even find it necessary to go to a health care provider. Children usually don’t get so much affected by the coronavirus. I learned one of the main reasons why Corona Virus target the elderly the most, and it obliged me to ensure we keep our loved ones safe.

Allana Shaikh warned us about the future outbreaks that we are going to have to witness. More epidemics and more outbreaks are going to come our way, and this is a given with the way we are interacting with the planet. As much as we don’t want to blame our actions, unfortunately, they are one of the main reasons why we should expect more outbreaks to come. Climate change does come into consideration here. In a way, we are creating an atmosphere which is more hospitable to viruses and bacteria by warming the climate. 

The first response of many to an outbreak is to impost regulations and attempt to control the outbreak with a quarantine. Unfortunately, to set a good, effective quarantine and travel restrictions is really difficult. Even countries like the US or South Korea, who have made serious investments in public health, would find it really difficult to get that kind of restriction in place fast enough to stop the outbreak. COVID-19 has an incubation period of about 24 days, and during that time, one can show almost no symptom. These infected people may walk around with the virus, unknown to the fact that they are infected and could potentially get others infected as well. These people will not get quarantined since no one knows that they are in need of quarantine. Hearing this, I was extremely disappointed but understood why a quarantine was not feasible.

It is also very expensive to impose quarantine. The social characteristics of humans come to display as experienced in the previous Ebola outbreak. This is because, as soon as quarantine is put in place, people start trying to evade it. People may be hesitant to go to a health care provider if they know there’s a strict quarantine protocol. They may be afraid of the medical system or they might not be able to afford care and would not want to be separated from their friends and family. Politicians and government officials may also conceal real information for the fear of triggering a quarantine protocol. These acts of dishonesty and evasions make it extremely difficult to track an outbreak. 

Allana Shaikh also points out the disparity in the availability of resources a country might have to oppose the outbreak. For example in Sierra Leone, they had identified the Ebola crisis extremely quickly, however they didn’t have the resources and facilities to respond to the deadly virus. They didn’t have enough hospital beds nor information about how to treat the virus or how to implement infection control. They only had around 120 doctors in the whole country, of which 11 died due to the Ebola Virus. In contrast, Dallas Baylor Medical Centre has more than a thousand physician on staff. These kinds of inequalities increase the number of deaths caused by viruses. So, according to Allana, if we really want to slow down this COVID-19 outbreak, we need to ensure that every country has the capacity to identify the diseases, be able to treat them and share information among themselves.

Lastly, she emphasised the importance of personal hygiene during an outbreak by setting up a routine in which you wash your hands every time you go out, every time you touch your pet, before and after eating food etc. She had also mentioned to not forget to sanitize your phones, as it may contain the most amount of bacteria. 

With her speciality being able to assess and evaluate situations and health systems during an outbreak, it allows us to look at this pandemic from a different perspective. This TedTalk has brought a lot of attention to our actions to curtail the spread of the contagious virus, and how we can learn from previous outbreaks.   

Stay safe, stay home!

ShubangiP