Covid-19 has been declared pandemic by WHO quite sometime back. The problem with Covid-19 is it’s easy spread from person to person transmission. The so called Patient 31 of South Korea is a most potent example of this kind transmission.

The person who is said to be 60 year old without any history of travel to China got flu like symptoms and was advised for Corona virus test. She seems to have denied going to test for few days and lived a normal life. She met with accident, spent a day in hospital due to minor car accident, went to church congregation twice, a buffet with his friend and led a very normal life. While doing all of this she developed high fever and finally got tested for Covid-19 and she was declared positive as the 31st case of Corona Virus. This one person came into contacts with thousands and the number of cases in the city area Daegu spiralled into upwards of 5000 and Korea became one of highest cases outside China.

Social Distancing

Had she been aware of such transmission maybe she would have much more careful. Social Distancing is important for this prime reason. Countries like India already have very little medical infrastructure and it will be very easy to overburden the system. Also with so high density of population in our country one patient like Patient 31 can create massive spread of the virus.

Break the Chain

The only way to break the chain is to quarantine oneself. Stop going to places where large group of people can come into contact. Most of the offices have already allowed employees to work from home. This will ideally help you stay put at home. Don’t go out unless it is really required for essentials. Make basic washing of hands a regular exercise. You can assume any surface that you touch to have the virus from the cash in your pocket, credit cards, mobile phones, door knobs, morning newspaper, deliveries of food supplies or other essentials. We should border on being obsessive compulsive disorder at this moment for sure.

The Epidemic of 1918

The flu epidemic of 1918 was one of the largest in history much larger than the bubonic plague of middle era. It has affected 500 million people around the world which was 20% of the world population and there were estimated deaths between 20 to 40 million people worldwide. The times were much different than, the world was going through first major war involving whole bunch of countries and there was lot of movement of people around which led to the spread. This was time that India’s population had seen a decrease in the 20th century.

India had bore the greatest brunt of the pandemic then and if we don’t be careful enough this time it can become a huge problem for us again. Relative much richer countries are on their knees already who have much better facilities to depend on and much lesser population to deal with.

Let’s follow public distancing seriously. There is nothing much that can be done and we have to make sure that the person to person transmission is kept at minimum. A single infected person can pass the virus to thousands and hence we have to isolate us from one another. We cannot afford to not break this chain of transmission.

God help all of our countrymen as well the whole humanity in defeating the virus.