Express News Service KOCHI: During any epidemic situation, the human behavioural component plays an important role. In a developing country like India can we afford to stay back at home? Or do we need to go to work if we are unwell? The number of people we meet every day, the way we commute—by public transport or car (including cab services) determine the route of transmission of pathogens. Moreover, our bodies may react differently to an infection, which in turn can facilitate or inhibit the transmission of the pathogen to others. That is why children less than 10 years and senior citizens are vulnerable. Hospitals worldwide are postponing elective surgeries and asking patients to reschedule regular checkups (not treatment) and communicate with their doctors over the phone in addition to taking other steps to reduce demands on doctors and nurses so they can handle Covid-19 cases. One of the biggest issues faced by scientists worldwide is that the real number of infected people is still unknown. One new study estimates that for every confirmed COVID-19 case, there are five to ten cases without symptoms or with mild symptoms that go undetected. This huge uncertainty explains why the case fatality rate (i.e. how many people die out of 100 infected people) remains to be elusive for this new virus, despite the fact that such a figure is critical for better predicting the impact of the epidemic and guiding the public health response. According to analysis with data from different countries, the range for the case fatality rate may be between 0.3% and 3%, but it will be necessary to perform serological studies (seeking for antibodies against the virus) at the population level in order to have a better idea of the size of the infected population and the real case fatality rate. The approach based on massive screening helped South Korea in not only managing to contain the epidemic through the identification and isolation of cases and contacts, but also provided more reliable numbers than other countries for estimating the dynamics of transmission and the fatality rate of the virus. WHO has urged countries to practice containment (detect and isolate cases, identify and quarantine contacts) and mitigation (slow down viral spread in the community) at the same time. Along this line, a modelling exercise performed by a team at Harvard suggests that individual quarantine and/or contact monitoring, even if imperfect, synergizes with social distancing to reduce and mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic.The authors are medical practitioners at the Department of Hospital Administration, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi Medical practitioners talk about the need to practice social distancing, and how it could be the kryptonite in our fight against COVID-19

Stay updated with all the Latest Kochi headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.