Prevention of Coronavirus: How Can We Be Safe?

The famous adage says “Prevention is better than cure”. The same is true for the epidemic that has rocked China and the world, the novel coronavirus. Even, after the first case was reported close to 2 months ago in Wuhan, China and the virus was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO), no cure has till now been created and tested on human beings. This leads to an important question, Can we not do anything to survive this virus? The answer is Yes. Even without a cure, it is possible to prevent this virus from affecting your body. The World Health Organization has enlisted certain precautionary measures for the people to undertake to prevent getting affected by the virus. These general recommendations are made considering the available evidence and past experience of facing the same kind of epidemic.

• A general precaution is to practice general hygiene measures when visiting live animal markets, animal products or wet markets. These include washing hands with soap and potable water after direct contact with animals and avoid unnecessary touching of mouth, eyes and nose.
• Avoid contact with stray animals living in the market and strictly avoid contact with sick animals and spoiled animal products. Attention should be taken while handling animal wastes and other by-products.
• Raw meat, milk and animal organs should be handled with extreme care and mixing with other food items should be avoided. Uncooked animal meat should be avoided.

In addition to the general recommendations, people at high risk of the virus should also exercise the following precautionary measures:

• As little information is known about the cure of the virus, patients with virus symptoms should be considered high-risk patients and should be isolated and quarantined by the concerned authorities. People around infected patients should exercise restraint in contact with the patient.
• People working in slaughterhouses, animal rearing farms and markets should always use personal protective equipment like gloves and masks. These people should avoid possibly infected clothing material and other personal stuff from exposure to their family members.