Coronavirus (COVID-19): safety precautions & forecast worldwide
While China is slowly but steadily recoving from the novel pandemic – coronavirus (COVID-19), the rest of the world is still in the midst of fight against it. Countries are closing borders, airlines – cancelling flights, people are storing food and goods preparing to spend days in home isolation. Some businesses are trying to use the situation to get more profit, others are making arrangements for their employees to work from home.
And this is just the time when each of us is important and can contribute alot to the mankind by taking simple precautions and staying home. What can be easier?
1. Wash hands properly
Alcohol based hand sanitizer
When outside use hand sanitizer. If it is not available in shops you can make it at home by mixing 1 part of aloe vera gel with 3 parts of ethyl or isopropyl alcohol and a few drops of essential oil (for example, tea tree oil).
2. Stay home
Avoid going outside unnecessarily. You are safe at home.
3. Call doctor if unwell
Do not go to the hospital on your own if you feel unwell and experiencing such symptoms like fever (even mild), dry cough and difficulty in breathing. Almost all countries have arranged toll-free emergency coronavirus phone lines.
Central helpline for coronavirus in India: +91 11 2397 80 46
If you are not staying in the national capital here you can download a list of helpine numbers of States and Union territories (UTs).
Not everyone takes the new virus with the due seriousness and some even laugh at people who start panicking and swipe everything from store shelves. Sure, panic is not helpful in the situation but staying alert, informed and precautious of utmost importance.
Current situation of coronavirus in the world (as of April 1, 2020)
Recently the USA has topped the anti-rating of countries with the fastest spread of coronavirus. Italy, where the situation was one of the most difficult has went down to the second position. However, the country preserves the highest number of coronavirus-related deaths in one day.
The graph below shows that besides the high number of active cases China could stabilize the situation whereas the USA is facing a sudden hike up.
Forecast of coronavirus spread in the world (till May 1, 2020)
The human coronavirus has a cunning nature of fast spreading and infecting people not only via droplets but it also remains persistant on various surfaces upto several days. Thus, it is required to isolate all possible patients from public places. Since COVID-19 has a rather long incubating period it makes impossible (without special laboratory tests) to detect it on early stages. Thus, worldwide lockdown and self-isolation of population is a need in the current situation. Social distancing is the only way if not to stop the coronavirus completely but at least to slow down its pace in the world.
Current situation of COVID-19 in India (as of April 1, 2020)
Coronavirus situation forecast for India (till April 13, 2020)
We all want to know the future especially in such a dramatic situation. Here is a data analysis conducted by a MATLAB expert – Mr. Akhilesh Kumar. On the basis of the collected data available in news he has made a prediction of COVID-19 spread in India for the next weeks (till April 13, 2020).
As we can see from the bar graph, the number of cases is increasing very fast, so, please, take precautions as mentioned above. DO NOT panic, rather take the situation seriously and be alert. Stay home to flatten the curve.
For more insightful analysis with codes check: Analysis of COVID-19 Pandemic in India
Coronavirus current situation and forecast for China (as of March 21, 2020 till April 1, 2020)
The green line shows the number of confirmed COVID-19 patients. As we can see from the graph, the line keeps almost on same level from March 4, 2020. That is a great achievement of the Chinese nation. Active cases (red dots) are also falling. The black line represents the forecast number of cases by the end of the month (March). It is obvious that Chinese measures of combatting the novel virus have proved effective. According to the given forecast, by the end of March – beginning of April, the number of active cases will drop almost to zero.
Why COVID-19 is dangerous?
- It is a novel virus not known before. Therefore, the behaviour of the virus is unpredictable and not fully studied.
- There is no vaccine or any other type of medicine for COVID-19.
- The disease spreads very fast and is especially dangerous for people over 60 year old with health problems.
- Symptoms of COVID-16 are similar to pneumonia.
Difference between cold, flu and COVID-19
How to protect yourself against COVID-19
For more useful information on coronavirus (COVID-19) and international situation check official website of the World Health Organization (WHO).