COVID-19 took a huge toll in both developing and developed countries. COVID 19 is an infectious disease caused by the newly discovered coronavirus. Most people with this virus may suffer from a mild to life-threatening disease. Symptoms of the virus include fever, dry cough , tiredness, aches and pains, sore throat, diarrhoea, conjunctivitis, headache, loss of taste or smell, a rash on skin, or discolouration of fingers or toes, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, chest pain or pressure and loss of speech or movement. The virus resulted in a global pandemic as most countries had not prepared for it adequately and had no cure when it was found. In most countries, it caused several deaths.
As of May 2021, the United States remains the world leader with 33 million of 165 million cases (20%) and 590,000 of 3.4 million deaths (17%) from COVID-19. The US has failed to manage the virus mainly through the reduction of the risk and by sidelining expertise during the pandemic’s critical early days and weeks. Trump rejected it as no worse than flu and said that by Easter the pandemic would end. One thing that shouldn’t have been done is people downplaying the infection. It created a huge problem as it led to the continuous loss of lives in the US. Organisations were sidelined quickly and Trump himself, through his daily briefs, became the principal government lead for COVID updates. The administration of Trump controlled very closely what health agencies could do and made it difficult for citizens to see how severe the virus was. Therefore some citizens thought it was a myth and failed to adhere to the protocols for fighting against the virus like wearing of masks, distancing themselves in public etc..
Another way America failed was slow and faulty testing. Instead of using a German-developed one used by the World Health Organisation, the center for diseases control and prevention (CDC) developed its own virus test. However, the CDC test was defective and caused a deadly delay as scientists solved the problem. The agency was not designed to perform tests to detect infections while they spread silently across the population. Meanwhile, private companies approved testing slowly in the Food and Drug Administration. The earliest test criteria were too strict and one often had to go to a “high risk” zone to have been hospitalized with severe symptoms. The virus has remained undetected for weeks due to these hurdles. When testing became more accessible in many places, the spread of the community was already rampant and it was difficult to trace contacts and isolate people before they infected other people.
Another failure of the US was inadequate tracing, isolation and quarantine. The long-term methods of countering infectious disease, testing people, tracking contacts and isolating or quarantining people who are positive or exposed to COVID was not done in time.
Besides its testing problems, the USA has not done enough to isolate the known or suspected of being infected (or recently traveled to a high-risk area), to trace their contacts, or to require quarantine for exposed people. Policies such as housing the people exposed to government-approved hotels or guarantees but effective, in the US, a nation who rejoices in personal freedoms, would likely have been harder to implement. But not doing so came at the expense of keeping the virus in check.
U.S. and global health authorities were slow to recommend masks for public use. In the early weeks and months of the COVID outbreak, the CDC and WHO stated that face masks were not necessary for the general public unless a person was experiencing symptoms or caring for someone who was. The agencies also initially urged people not to buy high-filtration N95 and surgical masks because they were needed for health care workers and were in short supply because of inadequate government stockpiles. Even after health experts reached a consensus that masks were effective, Trump refused to set an example by wearing one in public. Instead he mocked people who wore them, and many of his supporters rejected masks as well.
Another failure in the US was the manner in which racism fostered inequalities in health. The pandemic exposed profoundly rooted health and health care racial and economic inquiries. Black and Hispanic persons and other colored persons were sickened with COVID and died of it at excessively high rates. In Black communities many people had already suffered for some time as a result of inappropriate care, lack of access to nutritious food and outdoor space, and increased risk of pollution due to high levels of underlying conditions such as obesity and diabetes. The US health workers and hospitals saw to the welfare of whites more than Blacks and the Hispanics. They also include a large number of essential workers in frontline industries with an inherently high risk of COVID exposure, such as nursing homes, restaurants workers, cleaners etc… The uneven death toll served as a wake-up call that far too many people of color lack access to preventative health care, as well as safeguards such as paid sick leave or hazard pay.
Despite the many mistakes and bad choices in the US US response, some astounding success stories were also available. Perhaps the most significant success in this crisis was the creation of the vaccine. Within a year of the genetic sequence of the virus, two vaccines had been introduced. A Pfizer and BioNTech and a moderna designed company have found an effective symptomatic COVID prevention of approximately 95 percent and have been licensed for emergency use in the United States. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, with efficacies of 66 percent in preventing moderate to severe disease and 85 percent in preventing severe illness alone, was recently authorized as well. (The Johnson & Johnson vaccine’s efficacy cannot be directly compared with that of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines because the former was tested in a different population at a time when more dangerous variants of the virus were circulating.) All three vaccines prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death.
Heroic efforts of the Health care workers in the US was one key in which the country managed to control thevirus. In fact, the health care workers increased and risked their lives to care for COVID patients, facing unprecedented levels of disease and death. The elderly and most vulnerable individuals were treated as the virus devastated nursing homes by the nurses, aides and clinicians. At all hours of the night, paramedics reacted to calls. During their struggle to breathe, doctors, nurses and other hospital staff rejoiced and held their hand in video calls of families not permitted to go to room with them.
Over the course of time, medical professionals have learned better techniques for the treatment of the disease, ranging from pharmaceuticals such as steroids and monoclonal anticorps to low-tech interventions such as “proning.” Even when nursing homes and hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID patients, hard-working personnel continued to show up, move after move, face terror, exhaustion and desperation.
The public (mostly) did its part. Despite COVID becoming a part of the country’s bitter and escalating political divide, many Americans followed public health guidance regarding mask wearing, social distancing and avoiding unnecessary risks. People in the US started to learn about the effects of not taking the virus seriously and started adhering to the protocols.
Also, misinformation about the virus was cleared up by science journalists with clear, evidence-based report.
In the UK, more than 100,000 people have died of Covid and the effects of the pandemic – both societal and economic – have been seismic.
Epidemiologists and former public health officials say the U.K.’s strategy for combating COVID-19 was muddled leading to delays in purchasing essential equipment and tests, mixed messages about public health practices, and a lag behind its neighbors in implementing social distancing and other restrictions. That likely allowed the virus to spread fast and undetected.
Britain’s first mistake came around the time when the coronavirus was first confirmed in England, on Jan. 31. Prime Minister Boris Johnson chose not to chair a meeting of the government’s emergency COBRA committee, leaving his health secretary Matt Hancock to do so instead. Johnson not chairing the meeting led to the government missing the opportunity to see that they needed to be ready to do lots of testing, that they would need to sort out stocks for personal protection and for oxygen and other supplies.
The UK government placed too much confidence in Britain’s scientists and doctors, without doing enough to obtain the scarce equipment they required to do their jobs.
The U.K. did really well with the earliest cases by identifying the infected and doing contact tracing.
The UK also made a mistake of not moving to obtain tests early enough. The government made a string of controversial decisions by declaring to cease tracing and testing the contacts of coronavirus patients, effectively accepting that a full-scale outbreak was inevitable in the country.
Most developing countries suffered miserably as a result of unevenly inadequate health systems. It might have been during the pandemic that most developing countries realized how importantly they needed to invest in their health system. Hospitals in these countries were not able to stomach the patients. Most of these hospitals even lacked the equipment needed to help the patients back to life. Several countries had to order PPE’s and other facilities from developed countries. In the case of Ghana, some health workers were seen to be selling PPE’s at exorbitant prices to other health workers since the country did not have PPE’s . The COVID-19 threat to frontline health workers in low-income countries has been largely ignored. Only a small fraction of needed PPE has gone to them. The WHO has dispatched 0.5 million PPE sets, while UNICEF has dispatched 100,000 N95 masks, 4.3 million gloves and other PPE. Billionaire philanthropist Jack Ma has donated 100,000 masks and 1000 protective suits each to every African country and 1.8 million masks to 10 Asian countries.
There were not enough governmental facilities to host people who were to be quarantined. A recent survey of the availability of four BIP and four PPE items in seven poor countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC], Haiti, Nepal, Senegal and Tanzania) found less than a third of clinics and health centres in Bangladesh, the DRC, Nepal and Tanzania had any face masks. In all seven countries, clinics and health centres, often the first point of public contact with the health system, had, on average, just 2.3 (of four) BIP items and two (of four) PPE items. Most developing countries also scored poorly on health workers’ preparedness. Most health workers were not prepared to put their lives on the line or were not provided with the right equipment to protect them.
Developing countries are also extremely vulnerable to changes in exporter policies, such as export restrictions on COVID-19 tests, treatments and PPE. Besides affecting availability, export restrictions supposedly due to domestic shortages have pushed up world prices. Therefore, as high-income countries scramble to secure crucial supplies such as face masks, low-income countries face much tougher choices. Their budgets are far more limited, and they typically lack local producers for most PPE, relying on n and multilateral organizations for procurement in the face of unreliable supply chains.
Misinformation needs to be cleared in developing countries like it was done in the UK and USA. Although misinformation has not been fully cleared up in these developed countries, developing countries still suffer severely from this misinformation. Most people still believe in the myth that COVID 19 is a result of the 5G network while others fail to adhere to the laid down rules because of their reliance on their supreme being.
In a nutshell, developing countries can learn to provide adequate equipment for health workers, build up more health centers, help the media to put up facts instead of myths, educate its citizens on the virus, and learn to make protective gear in case of emergencies.
2021-7-10-1625954486