COVID-19 pandemic : A review
“To succeed our war against COVID-19, we should, kill the virus before it kills us”. –R. Rajasekharan Nair & Vinod R. Alappad
INTRODUCTION
Ever since the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the Corona Virus Disease as Pandemic, the entire world is passing through a grave situation. The War against corona virus i.e. COVID-19 in on throughout the world. The situation in some countries are very severe and already affected the socio-economic fabric of the country itself. As on today, the 26th April, 2020, COVID-19 has spread to more than 29 lakh persons and out of which more than 2 lakhs died.
The first three cases of COVID-19 were reported in India from the three districts of Kerala viz. Thrissur on 30th January, 2020; Alappuzha on 2nd February, 2020 and Kasaragod on 3rd February, 2020. All three COVID-19 patients are medical students who had returned from Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 originated. All of them were admitted in respective district hospitals of Kerala for treatment and all of them have been fully recovered and discharged. For about a month, there was no reporting of COVID-19 cases in India. However, from 1st week of March, 2020, onwards, there were a number of COVID-19 cases reported from various parts of India and all of them had travelled from other countries. Incidentally, by 26th April, 2020, the confirmed COVID-19 cases in India rose to 27,886 and out of which about 880 died.
As the COVID-19 was spreading, some of the States in India, notably Kerala had taken a number of measures to contain the spread of virus. In order to contain the COVID-19, on 22nd March 2020, India observed a 14-hour voluntary public curfew (Janata Curfew) at the instance of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government followed it up with lockdowns in 75 districts, where COVID-19 cases had occurred. Further, on 24th March, 2020, the Prime Minister announced a Nationwide Lockdown for 21 days. On 14th April, 2020, the Prime Minister had extended the ongoing Nationwide Lockdown till 3rd May, 2020. Thus, the war against COVID-19 will be continuing for another 19 days.
This article deals with the existing scenario of COVID-19 Pandemic and the control measures adopted or to be adopted by India to contain its spread. It may be noted here that, the data used in this article are compiled from various sources, such as Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW), World Health Organization (WHO); worldOmeter, covid19india.org; etc. The compiled data is only up to 26th April, 2020. It may be mentioned here that the data released by MoHFW and the State Governments always differ. The data used in this article is compiled from the sources of the State Governments, and therefore the data quoted is more than the data released by MoHFW. As the data is being updated constantly, the data quoted in this article may vary, by the time this article is published. Though, the economic aspects of this pandemic are also very much important, these aspects are not dealt in this feature, which we will be dealing in a separate article.