Tag: Covid

COVID Outbreak in China | Closure of provinces

News

March 16, 2022
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3 min
2 years
515 words

Tagged Covid, Lockdown, Pandemic, wuhan

COVID Outbreak in China | Closure of provinces

In China, a COVID outbreak has resulted in the closure of a province with a population of 24 million people.

WRITTEN BY: SONALI SINGH

Jilin province’s shutdown comes a day after China placed 17.5 million people of Shenzhen, a technological and commercial hub in the south, on lockdown for at least a week due to an increase in cases.

Following a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, China cut off the northeastern province of Jilin, which has a population of over 24 million people, marking the first time an entire province has been cut off since the unprecedented lockdown of Hubei and its capital, Wuhan, in 2020, where the virus was first detected in late 2019.

New infections have been recorded from Shanghai in the east to Shenzhen in the south, with clusters in Beijing and populous provinces like Zhejiang. China’s authorities are rushing to manage a country-wide rise in cases with mass screenings, lockdowns, and travel restrictions.

On March 13, the national health commission (NHC) announced 1,337 new domestically transmitted Covid cases in mainland China. On Monday, 2125 instances were reported Sunday, including asymptomatic cases. According to Reuters calculations, this pushed the number this year to almost 9,000, up from 8378 in 2021.

People in Jilin province, which borders Russia and North Korea, have been instructed not to leave or travel, especially in Changchun, the provincial capital, and Jilin itself.

On Sunday, the provincial government of Jilin recorded 895 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 131 asymptomatic carriers. 453 fresh confirmed infections were recorded in the city of Jilin, and 430 in the provincial capital Changchun, a city with a population of over nine million people that is already under lockdown.

To contain the latest outbreak, local officials have undertaken numerous rounds of mass nucleic acid testing and constructed makeshift hospitals, according to state news agency Xinhua.

China has implemented a stringent “zero-Covid” policy, which has recently been renamed “dynamic zero,” intending to eradicate epidemics and chains of transmission through mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine, and lockdowns.

The fast-spreading Omicron form, on the other hand, has cast doubt on China’s anti-Covid laws. For example, the city of Shanghai is witnessing a severe outbreak, the worst since 2020.

“As the city grapples with its most serious Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic began two years ago, Shanghai has suspended long-distance bus services, shut down entertainment venues, and placed hundreds of residential compounds, university campuses, and office buildings on lockdown,” the Sixth Tone website reported on Monday.

Since the first case in the current wave was discovered on March 1, it has documented over 700 infections, with 89 percent of them asymptomatic.

By Sunday, the total number of verified Covid-19 cases on the mainland, both locally and internationally, had climbed to 116,902. On Sunday, 8,531 patients were still receiving treatment, with eight of them in critical condition. Since the disease’s emergence in late 2019, 4636 people have died from the virus on the mainland.

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Public Health Governance | Impact of COVID-19 on Global Health

Article

March 10, 2022
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6 min
2 years
1,054 word

Tagged Covid, Global Health, Health Care, Keywords:- Governance, Pandemic

Public Health Governance | Impact of COVID-19 on Global Health

As the international politics of health become more challenging, a profoundly transformed setting means that global health governance faces increasing risks.

Keywords:- Governance, Politics, Global health, Health care, Pandemic

Author: Dr. Saumya Lal

Introduction

As the international politics of health become more challenging, a profoundly transformed setting means that global health governance faces increasing risks. Rival states are forced to view practically every problem through the warped lens of geopolitical competition. In the relentless process of strategic priority-setting that geopolitics generates across the international system. This dynamic affects the politics of health cooperation, but it also degrades health.

Global health is once again being subordinated to great power politics. The internet contributes to democracies’ political problems. Domestic factions and foreign states use the internet to propagate disinformation and commit other destructive activities both within and against democratic countries. Authoritarian governments have curtailed internet freedom and used it into a weapon against their own citizens and adversaries. These techniques have shown to be effective, ensuring that they will continue to play a role in local and international politics for years to come. These phenomena are not escaping health. Health experts are increasingly faced with disinformation produced by state and non-state actors on the Internet on vaccines, outbreaks and climate change.

Management and governance

Management and governance requires assuring the existence of strategic policy frameworks paired with effective supervision, coalition building, regulation, system design attention and accountability. The health system and its governance are determined by three primary kinds of actors who interact with one another:

State (governmental and sub-national organisations and agencies);
healthcare providers, (different public and private clinical, para medical and non-clinical healthcare providers; public and private services providers, trade union and nonprofit organisations;
care or service networks;
citizen (population officials, patient associations, CSOs/NGOs, public service providers)

As populations continue to experience demographic and epidemiological transitions, and as people begin to suffer from consequent ageing, longevity and higher life expectancies. Future clinical medicine could lead to increased cost without significantly improving health outcomes.

Thus, medicine aims to become data driven and less individualistic so that population health (compared with only individuals). It is efficiently managed and improved while the costs are being kept excessively high. On the other hand, but in a complementary way, public health will begin to benefit from individualisation and individualisation of community and population well-being initiatives and practises to keep up with pace Public health.

By taking our knowledge of health over and above the traditional disease correlates, genomics helps better improve public health in the population and in population subgroups that are more predisposed to certain conditions and illnesses, which are now more easily stratified into a more detailed genetic risk and predisposition to common or rare diseases. Because some Countries have quite uniform populations, a more accurate public health method can tailor population-level interventions to specific groups whose conditions might have been lost in less customised and traditional public health interventions.

Population Health Management

Population Health Management is another aspect of the public health future that can make similar contributions in the field of genomics. But more focused on the sharing of interoperable, accurate and safe data. Big data can help authorities, regulators, and providers implement tailored actions as well as community promotion, prevention and campaigns, particularly for risky and vulnerable groups. So as to improve the health of the whole population. To predict and analyse trends and health decisions of individuals, lifestyle and environment more precisely.

Public health

These in-depth public health analyses require an approach that is very focused to prevent common diseases that are likely to spread or get endemic in a communal environment, to encourage certain lifestyle practises applicable to parts of the community, to improve care outcomes, to reduce costs and to reach a larger proportion of the population. By knowing the health drivers in a population, issues that can arise are easier to predict and therefore decide on strategies that are most useful for the improvement of health and well-being.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a clear example of role of each member of society as part of health care workforce. And the role of everyone in fostering effective outcomes for public health. Country responses were most successful with strong public health and health systems in governments that used a government-wide approach.

A cross-sector approach to health care, beyond key health stakeholders; one where academic institutes, workplaces, religious leaders, social institutions, civil society and law enforcement can provide the right culture to sustain change, is still essential to obtain effective public health interventions. Public health is to be successful by continuously educating and increasing awareness of individuals about their important participation. Along with their key role in improving public health, combined with digital enabling people to connect and understand their health data.

Future Public Health

The public health future will make more data available – at personal and system level – than ever before. Will thus have to address the challenge and ethical dilemma of the collection and analysis of data, particularly in genomics. The progress of which depends and was supported by advances in data sciences; computer technologies and the development of new and more advanced telecommunicators. As countries and public health systems sequence larger portions of their population. The huge amount of data produced by the next-generation sequence will require data stored and possibly protected beyond the capabilities available.

What we are sure of is that it is uncertain about the future of public health. Globalisation, increased interconnections, social media and easier education open our eyes to wellness lifestyles. Which enables communities not only to enhance their lifetime, but also to enhance their quality of life. The public health future paves the way for everyone who is informed and knows more about health. It is at the centre of our own health as ultimate decision-makers.

COVID-19 has revealed major global (health) administration weaknesses. Particularly the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been struck by the defence it shows towards China. As well as its initial response to it. The pandemic also revealed the validity of many criticisms. Although countries were unwilling to invest in strong global governance systems, but expected to respond quickly in an emergency. In fact, COVID-19 in many ways does not only present a breakdown of global health governance. But also, in particular, a failure to recognise health as a global inherent problem. That is closely linked to other transnational challenges.

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Hesitancy for the vaccine in the Covid Era

Article

June 30, 2021
2 Comments on Hesitancy for the vaccine in the Covid Era

6 min
3 years
1,028 word

Tagged Covid, Covid Crisis, COVID-19, Vaccination, Vaccine

Hesitancy for the vaccine in the Covid Era

If this hesitancy remains high due to the above reasons, it will be a critical situation for the nation or the world as it will lead to less coverage which further leads to disease outbreaks. It is a great threat to global health. Hesitancy to the vaccine is contagious, misinformed, misinformed, and not limited to COVID-19.

AUTHOR : DR. SHRUTI

In December 2k19, many got symptoms of shortness of breath, cold, cough, etc. caused by a pathogen that is unknown. Eventually, it was found out to be linked to the seafood market in China, particularly in Wuhan. Subsequently, the virus was identified as Coronavirus or COVID-19 by WHO (World Health Organization). It belongs to respiratory syndrome classification and is named SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2) by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. It has infected many and caused deaths in China initially and then spread to Italy, Europe, USA, and India, by this time WHO declared it as pandemic due to spread around the globe due to high level of infection and mortality rate.

Covid-19 has affected the world drastically; it brought personal losses to the economy at an individual as well as country level. The lockdown was introduced in almost every country for several months to break this chain of infection in the year 2020 which has many ill-effects like unemployment, financial losses, personal losses, etc. Worldwide, the two waves of this virus were observed, one on 2k20 and the second on 2k21. Also, many scientists and mathematicians have already predicted the third wave of this virus by the end of 2k21, especially affecting children up to 18 yrs of age. Covid-19 behavior was also introduced in all the nations which include –

Frequent hand sanitization/washing
Mask on while going out
Social Distancing
Reducing unnecessary outside houses

To control the spread of this virus, countries including India worked to introduce the vaccine against this novel Coronavirus. Many trials were conducted worldwide before the vaccine got administered as per the protocols of Drug Safety and Compliance. And finally, the day has arrived in Jan, 2k21 when the first jab was given to healthcare professionals and the front line workers, followed by the general public.

According to the recent data, there are a handful of countries that have curbed the novel virus and are not using masks anymore like-

Israel
Bhutan
USA
New Zealand
China

This achievement is a result of vaccine coverage for the nation. Below are the data for the vaccination coverage for the countries that are mask free now :-

Country	Coverage in percentage
Israel	70%
Bhutan	90%
USA	44.4 % of the population fully immunized
New Zealand	6.6 % of the population fully immunized
China	N/A

Other than above there are more places like-

Tuvalu
Turkmenistan
Tonga
Tokelau
Saint Helena
Pitcairn Islands
Palau
North Korea
Niue
Nauru
Kiribati
Federated States of Micronesia
Cook Islands
American Samoa

These places have curbed the virus due to the only reason for high immunization rates. Worldwide we are not getting the immunization rate as it was desired to be due to vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy is a spectrum to refuse all vaccines to accept some vaccines. WHO defines the term “vaccine hesitancy” as a behavior that is influenced by numerous factors such as lack of confidence in vaccine or provider, complacency (don’t perceive it feeling not required), and access or convenience. The individuals who are vaccine-hesitant may accept few and then doubt on few, some delay or refuse to get immunized. Each one of us should understand and respect the availability of the vaccines as it is the crucial aspect in this Covid era to minimize the infections, specifically the healthcare or front line workers. Population which is vaccine-hesitant or showing negative behavior towards immunizations is a major concern towards the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

As per the literature review, there are many studies done in the past worldwide showing low acceptance of the vaccine. Factors or reasons given by participants are as follows-

Employment – Less educated/ unemployed showed low acceptance
Personal perception
Religion
Politics
Gender
Income
Covid infection
Other comorbidities
Medical diseases like Cancer etc.

Literature review from high-income countries suggested the 5 determinants responsible for vaccine-hesitant behavior. 5C framework is as follows :-

As per the history of vaccination drive happened in the past, it helped many nations to forget the diseases like smallpox, polio, yellow fever, etc. which caused millions of deaths. All thanks to vaccination, for COVID-19 also it could have shown this picture but hesitancy towards the same is a big hindrance to overcome. This reluctance is not limited to only COVID vaccine but to other vaccinations as well. Director-General of WHO right said that “We are not just fighting with an epidemic; we are fighting with an infomedic. Infodemic is excess of information that got spread during an outbreak, some correct and some not via media or physical communications leading to poor access to accurate information.

Fb (Facebook) has conducted a survey – COVID-19 symptom survey (CSS) in India, the results are not impressive, it showed the hesitancy rate in India to be 28.7% Hesitancy is the highest in Tamil Nadu as high as 42% followed by Punjab with 41%. Recent government reports also suggested that it is more prevalent in rural or remote areas even after multiple visits of healthcare professionals. In the past when the vaccine for polio was introduced, India has faced this hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy is not new to India. At that time also, some collaborations were made with leaders of either politics or religion. This time also the government is adopting many initiatives to reduce vaccine hesitancy-

Folk songs used to aware local people
Misinformation for vaccines is creating havoc. To alert officials about unreliable or fake news related to it.
Leaders or influencers like Mr. Amitabh Bachchan did campaign for Polio.
Delay should be addressed immediately.
Healthcare professionals are aware of people and inform them about the benefits of vaccines.
The general public be made aware of myths about vaccinations linked to medical diseases like, patients with blood cancers or any other types of cancer, etc., or other conditions like menstruating women, lactating women. There is no contraindication related to the above. Only contraindications exist for allergic patients or patients with low platelet count.

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