Why COVID-19 is deadly, COVID-19 prevention behaviors and flattening the curve of COVID-19

Dr. Dave On Call

In Episode 2, we discuss why COVID-19 is deadly, COVID-19 prevention behaviors and how we can flatten the pandemic curve of COVID-19.

Why is COVID-19 so deadly? It's a novel virus, never has it been seen by human beings until December 2019. COVID-19 is easily transmissible to other humans and it has a long incubation period. Importantly, we do not have a current COVID-19 vaccine for prevention and we currently do not have a validated treatment for COVID-19. All of these reasons contribute to the high infection rate and case fatality rate.

What behaviors can we implement to prevent COVID-19 infection? WASH YOUR HANDS! A minimum of 20 seconds, with a good soap lather. Those bubbles are destroying COVID-19 by a unique mechanism. If a hand washing station with soap is not available, use hand sanitizer, 60% alcohol is good enough for killing COVID-19. Make sure that you use ample hand sanitizer that covers the entire surface hand area. Try NOT to touch your face, one study observed people touching their faces over 20 times per hour! Limit the points of entry (eyes, nose, mouth) of COVID-19 from our hands. If you need to blow your nose or sneeze, use a tissue and if not available, cover your mouth with the inside of your arm. Make sure to wipe down high-frequency touched objects with sanitizing wipes including cell phones, door handles, light switches, etc. Most importantly, as we seek to lower the number of cases and deaths, implement physical distancing of 6ft for those individuals not residing in your home dwellings. This may be difficult while exercising and going to the grocery store/pharmacy, thus, a face cover (ie mask, scarf) will be important when you cannot implement adequate physical distancing. Remember, large respiratory droplets have immense difficulty traveling over 6 feet. Please don't congregate with others outside of your home dwelling it will only add to the spread of COVID-19.

Flattening the curve of COVID-19 will take a collective group effort during this pandemic. On the COVID-19 pandemic curve, the Y-axis is the number of cases and the X-axis is time. In the beginning of the pandemic, there were very few cases. We could have contained these individuals to prevent community spread. However, containment failed and we were forced to mitigate the community spread with aggressive physical distancing. Without protective measures (red curve), our death toll would be frightening high with some models predicting almost 2 millions US deaths. We would pass the threshold of our healthcare capacity (blue dotted line) But, with protective measures (purple/blue curve) like physical distancing, increased COVID-19 testing, good hand hygiene, etc., we can implement large scale mitigation strategies to aggressively flatten the pandemic curve. We CAN prevent reaching the threshold of our healthcare capacity and ensuring that if a COVID-19 patient needs to be admitted to the hospital and needs a ventilator, this patient can obtain a ventilator without concern.

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