COVID-19: Impact, containment and way forward

Common sense deliberations together with scientific approaches are needed to effectively reach solutions for COVID-19 – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

The coronavirus – COVID-19 – which originated in December 2019 in China has now become a worldwide pandemic. No vaccine is available as of today and therefore the second best solutions of social distancing, isolation of those showing positive signs, quarantining others who had been in contact with positive cases, and compelling the general public to stay at home through lockdowns enforced through curfew are the order of daily routine to date. Conspiracy theories as to the ‘birth’ of the virus as manmade to be used as a bioweapon have been put to rest after a coronavirus research specifically stated that the virus developed from nature through wildlife. COVID-19 has brought deaths to people and destructions to all levels of economies throughout the world. Man has learnt unforgettable lessons, technological and societal, through calamities and disasters of the past and must make use of those lessons to fight the present COVID -19 too. Common sense deliberations together with scientific approaches are needed to effectively reach solutions for COVID-19. Assessments of the health, economic downturn and the psychological issues on people all over in the aftermath of COVID-19 should take primacy before any long term solutions formulated. May Almighty God help us in our endeavours to seek a sustainable solution to the scourge of COVID-19

The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that was supposed to have originated in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, has by now spread to many countries around the world and been declared a pandemic.

Every country inflicted by this virus is taking all measures possible to contain the spread of this danger but ends up with limited success. This is because on the one hand there are no proven medicines at present in the world to counter this virus and on the other the lackadaisical behaviour patterns of their citizens in being indifferent to the dangers of COVID-19.

It may also be possible that medicines to counter COVID-19 may be available in somewhere in other regions especially Cuba which puts high research efforts in developing medicines not on the basis of reaping exploitative profits, as the large pharmaceutical giants do, but based on humanitarian basis so that the rich and the less privileged are on equal footing in purchasing the required medicines. Why the Western world does not purchase medicines from Cuba may be due to the economic sanctions imposed on Cuba by USA, which this write-up does not wish to deal in.

China’s approach

China had claimed by now that it has eliminated COVID-19, in which case China is obliged to help others by making the method (s) that it used within China to other countries if that claim is true and genuine. But that has not happened yet, though it has donated and shipped in large quantities face masks, testing equipment, ventilators, etc. to many countries exposed to COVID-19 and in some instances with its own specialist medical personnel.

Yet with this helping hand too, the situation in Italy and Spain worsened as at 21 March and was continuing. This help is appreciated but what the world wants to know is the method(s) China employed to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Will China ever reveal the method(s) if it had been a secretive strategy as China being a particular case – a centrally-controlled, top-down, one-party authoritarian state that allows no dissent and can mobilise vast resources on a single issue when required.

The world has been told by China that it used a strict lockdown in Wuhan and other affected cities and the people there obeyed committedly – that is good news yet other affected countries have been deliberating on the pros and cons of implementing lockdowns in parts of their territories or whole country as lockdowns could have other issues that could disrupt the normal living patterns of their respective populations where the lifestyles may be completely different from that in China.

Lockdown/shutdown

Confining people to their homes – lockdown/shutdown – may be the best way to contain the spread of coronavirus. The question is how should people be made to stay at their homes through compulsory lockdowns/shutdowns or on voluntary basis, the latter will not be effective as the general public in every country are indifferent to the way they look at COVID-19 – they are not serious about it at least at the start of the epidemic. Therefore, the only option some nations resort to is compulsory or forced lockdown/shutdown through the imposition of curfew.

This strategy though proactive in preventing the spread of the virus through contacts, is nevertheless puts a burden on the people in buying their essential provisions which may be only possible during the short stretch of time the curfew is lifted for people to engage in this. This leads to crowding and crushing in the buying centres or supermarkets which will nullify one of the preventive measures – social distancing which is now called physical distancing. This has the possibility of healthy persons getting infected in case persons carrying the COVID-19 virus not knowing they have the virus are in the crowd.

The purpose of this measure of shutdowns with breaks will not serve the purpose. This is the dilemma faced by the government. Thus the government will have to make use of better and effective strategies to overcome this situation.

However, we saw as at 23 March, a better logistical arrangement was in place in supermarket stores in Sri Lanka. Customers were requested to come singly, follow the queue with physical distancing of one metre apart in the queue and within the shop floor, cover their mouth and nose when entering into the supermarket, and are allowed 20 minutes of shopping.

This could be taken as the best option in the otherwise chaotic buying scenario for the time being. What about the grocery boutiques that get crowded? And here we may not have a feasible solution. It is a question of food for the people forced to be in self quarantine – of course for their own care – who have to be given adequate time to purchase their provisions.

Emergence of coronavirus

In trying to understand the impact of COVID-19, on the wellbeing (health) of the people; micro, small and large enterprises and industries; national and world economies and looking at the future standing of these economic contributors, one is compelled to look into the cause of the emergence of the coronavirus to ascertain whether the virus is manmade or from nature.

The claims or the conspiracy theories that are afloat as at present are:

(1) The coronavirus originated in a military lab in Wuhan, China to be used as a biological weapon;

(2) It was created in an American lab;

(3) COVID-19 originated in nature – animals in nature as the origin of the virus. The virus originated in wildlife.

Was it an engineered virus? People for sure cannot accept any of these as they are just imaginations, biased viewpoints, even delusions – no proof or evidence for the claims. We are also told of an optimistic view: Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist has a different story and he is optimistic that the COVID-19 virus will fade off and the world will be safe – he predicts a quicker COVID-19 recovery – ‘we are going to be fine’, he says – but if that is going to be the case, we all would be happy.

As at 27 March 2020, we are told that coronavirus research done recently has disproved all conspiracy theories with the assertion that it is not a laboratory construct but developed from nature. No one, no government can take chances and must be committed to the presently available medical guidelines that are to be followed by all stakeholders in the COVID-19 pandemic and there are no alternatives to this.

Impact of COVID-19 is manifold

The impact of COVID-19 is manifold:

(a) On the lives of the people and has caused just over 38,000 deaths worldwide as at 31 March;

(b) It has made the national and world economies collapse;

(c) It has made the livelihood of people, especially the self-employed, daily wage earners and the underprivileged suffer economically without any signs of immediate recovery;

(d) Weakened the economic backbone of giant businesses and multinationals;

(e) Has ruptured religious obligations, lifestyles and cultural patterns of majority of people;

(f) Disrupted the functioning of schools, colleges and universities and many more institutional breakdowns;

(g) Curtailed foreign travel through shutdowns of Airports;

(h) Has made work at national health units and community centres difficult to cope up with;

(i) Made all share markets collapse.

It has affected everyone without exception: the unfortunate ones who were infected have died; the less fortunate who were suspected to have had contacts with the infected, are in the isolation units, or quarantine units, or hospitals; the general public self-quarantined in their homes – all of these people, in various degrees, undergoing physical, psychological and economic hardships.

Could there had been anything worse than this in the history of mankind as a universal real time scourge? Depending on the mental model of a person based on their beliefs in divinity (religion) or nature/evolution, one would assign COVID-19 as an act of God as punishment/testing or nature’s way of teaching mankind to be fully concerned of all beings of mother nature and fall back to non-selfish living.

Man, though well advanced in scientific and technological achievements, is nonetheless absolutely poor in responding to natural disasters and calamities. When man succeeds in ending a calamity, it usually has happened after the loss of many lives and this is not success or achievement so to speak.

Non-availability of medicines or vaccines to combat COVID-19 at present is the main problem that faces all involved in trying to eliminate coronavirus. Failing in this, health authorities are resorting to second best intervention strategies such as testing for temperature, isolating/quarantining those thought of as vulnerable to the virus, hospitalising and treating the patients tested positive to COVID-19, the advising people to maintain a minimum distance of about one metre between persons, and putting large swathes into lockdowns/shutdowns.  

These are the interventions the governments have at their disposal which they implement in order to minimise or put a halt to the spread of COVID-19 virus. The reputed medical/pharmaceutical laboratories in the world are presently involved in developing vaccines to fight the COVID-19 virus but no one is sure how soon they will be able to come out with effective vaccines – thus the world, that is, humanity cannot be made to suffer any further.

On the other hand, there is a belief among some independent intellectuals and medical professionals, that certain countries that are politically marginalised by the first world countries might be in possession of vaccines to combat the deadly COVID-19 virus.

The present pandemic is a human issue and in such a case ideological, political, sectarian and religious considerations must be set aside to give a helping hand to the COVID-19 infected persons without looking into their nationalities and the geographical locations the virus is dominating at present. Sidelining and/marginalising any country on the basis of political agenda should not come into the COVID-19 pandemic equation.

COVID-19 has already taken nearly 41,000 lives, 850,000 infected and 168,000 recovered worldwide as at 31.03.2020. The world – humanity that is – cannot wait for more deaths and infections anywhere in the world just because political gatekeepers have erred in their approach to tackle the spread of COVID-19.

UNO and WHO must go beyond any barriers, if at all they do exist, to procure from where ever vaccines are available to give a helping hand to the suffering patients. By 24 March a team of specialist doctors and nurses from Cuba are in Italy to render the required assistance and this generosity of Cuba must be sought after by other regions in dire need of such assistance. This should be one option that must be adopted as a contingency approach while the Western nations are involved in developing their own preventive strategies particularly in developing the vaccines.

A daunting task

Effective response to COVID-19 is a daunting task that should compel all stakeholders to embrace diverse decision making techniques such as synectics (also known as zig-zag thinking), Delphi technique, Brainstorming and any other. Important discoveries in the past have come from accidental processes and it may be possible in the COVID-19 pandemic too, so one should not leave out even a simple way of reaching a solution for this virus problem while the learned intellectuals are perceiving that as complex and complicated.   

Every calamity that had come through the ages has taught mankind unforgettable lessons, positive and negative, that must be studied carefully to respond honestly and effectively in future events of any disaster. If we are to take the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004, Sri Lanka lost around 35,000 lives; damage to houses, buildings, compartments of railways and monuments all along the coastal belt areas of the Island.

When the tsunami was on its destruction spree, there was no way anyone could help them then and there as everyone in the tsunami-struck areas was finding difficult to save themselves and thus was not in a position to help others even if they wished to. What we have learnt from this is that when a disaster takes place without any warnings/signals, immediate help may not be possible.

Financial help to the survivors of the tsunami to re-build their damaged houses was getting implemented to which millions of rupees was allocated. Allocated funds for the tsunami victims did not reach the victims in the correct manner as misappropriation of the fund took place. Many people not affected at all by the tsunami grabbed the grants. A sizeable percentage of the tsunami victims were cheated and were either given a paltry sum or were given nothing at all. Corruption prevails in Sri Lanka and is more contagious than an epidemic. With the tsunami scenario thus mentioned, we must be determined to see that such downsides are not allowed to underpin the COVID-19 elimination interventions.

The Government is determined to get COVID-19 stop spreading. China claims it has eliminated it completely. What we have learnt is that we were not in a position to face an epidemic of this nature initially nor we were able to combat it as the virus was spreading due to complete lack of knowledge as to tackling an epidemic of this nature. We did not prioritise the different intervention programs that we used as we were overwhelmed with anxiety and panic.

Sri Lanka is also one country which took the virus threat lightly. Then we started to be a little aggressive in our approach to curtailing the spread of the virus. With the Parliamentary Election scheduled for 25 April, all political parties, their supporters and the general public were all focused on the election until the Election Commission postponed the election indefinitely. We must accept we are a little late. We must work unitedly to defeat the coronavirus under any costs. Whatever the drawbacks, Sri Lanka is managing the COVID -19 issue more effectively than many other countries affected by it.  

Forward strategies

The impact that we have faced, the containments we are operationalising, and the lessons learnt so far from earlier and the present disasters must be taken into account in formulating the forward strategies we will be compelled to adopt not only to eliminate COVID-19 from the shores of Sri Lanka and make the people resilient to the virus in the future but also on how the people should be helped to recover from the impact on the physiological, sociological, economic, psychological and spiritual (religious) domains.

Lessons learned come from at least two perspectives viz. common sense perspectives and through deterministic/probabilistic approach. Common sense approach should summarise the public opinions of intellectuals, the polity (State and others), businesses and the common people – that will be a jigsaw perspective that must be looked into along with deterministic/probabilistic approach in formulating the future strategies and must be deciphered intelligently to give a pragmatic and meaningful measure of what the citizenry has to say.

The deterministic/probabilistic approach should be a dedicated study of all the aspects that have emerged out of COVID-19 attack on Sri Lanka. In doing this study, assessments in terms of the after effects on the health, economy and psychology of the people and enterprises/organisations they have been involved in should form the foundation to project the future strategies. A preliminary report of the study must be made ready within two months from its starting day and it cannot be later than end of May 2020. The detailed study can come later.

From the assessment on the general health of the people, we will be able to know the extent to which the general wellbeing of the nation has got deteriorated, remedial measures to be adopted therein to alleviate the health issues and finally to restore confidence in the affected persons to accept that they can overcome the difficulties they are facing now with determination.

The assessments of the economic impacts on individuals and collectives, enterprises and organisations, and the country as a whole will speak out the sad story of total collapse of the economy. Government has to step in to help the financially affected people and the crippled businesses in ways that will be beneficial until the people and the enterprises are restored more or less to their initial positions. In order to do these, the Sri Lankan Government must seek foreign grants and must seek such grants from now onwards.

Unlike the health and economic issues which could be attended to through medical treatment and financial help, the psychological issues in the aftermath of COVID-19 will be a tremendous task and will have to be attended to through psychological counselling, psychological first aid (PFA), psycho-social and many other psychological interventions some of which may not be immediately possible due to the social or physical distancing that is needed now.

Sri Lanka as at present is having effective social, medical and bureaucratic infrastructures that are singly and in coordination doing their best to contain the COVID-19 to prevent its spread. Sri Lanka should be successful in its efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus as it has dedicated, devoted and committed people tackling the problem.