Articles: pandemics.
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Globalization Health · May 2020
Impact of international travel dynamics on domestic spread of 2019-nCoV in India: origin-based risk assessment in importation of infected travelers.
The recent pandemic caused by the 2019 outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV or COVID-19) has affected more than 3.0 million people resulting ~ 212,000 deaths across 215 countries/territories as on 28th April 2020. The importation of the cases owing to enormous international travels from the affected countries is the foremost reason for local cycle of transmission. For a country like India, the second most populous country in the world with ~ 1.35 billion population, the management and control of 2019-nCoV domestic spread heavily relied on effective screening and strict quarantine of passengers arriving at various international airports in India from affected countries. ⋯ The number of cases in India started exhibiting a sharp increase in the infected cases only after the European countries and USA recorded large number of infected cases. We further argue that while the number of cases in middle eastern countries may still be very low, the airports in middle eastern countries, particularly Dubai, being one of the largest transit hubs for international passengers, including arriving in India, might have posed a higher risk of getting infected with 2019-nCoV. We suggest that any future travel related disease infection screening at the airports should critically assess the passengers from major transit hubs in addition to affected country of origin.
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One of WHO primary function is to control and monitor internationally the spread of infectious diseases of the common killers. After SARS-COV, the International Health Regulations (IHR) was adopted in 2005 by all 194 member states to set up national preparedness for an efficient "early alert and response system". COVID-19 is a novel virus with an unpredictable course and many uncertainties about its biological, clinical and epidemiological characteristics. COVID-19 is a game changer and calls for a revision of IHR as well as a more biological, clinical and community-cantered preparedness strategy.
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The ongoing 2020 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is an enormous challenge for the health systems and the entire societies of the countries involved. Since at present the outbreak continues to evolve (April 2020), the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it a public health emergency of international concern, specifying that public health interventions aimed at the prevention of the further spread of this disease include quarantine. Quarantine, that may be defined as a restraint on the activities of people or on the traffic of goods, targeted to the prevention of the diffusion of communicable pathologies, is a health concept profoundly rooted in the history of mankind. ⋯ With specific reference to the COVID-19 pandemic, therefore, health authorities still adopt "classical" preventive interventions, namely workplace social distancing measures and quarantine, to reduce the transmission of the disease. Only the future will testify the precise overall effectiveness of preventive public health measures in containing the impact of the present coronavirus pandemic. However, what in this epidemiological scenario is already known, is that the multi-century international health value of quarantine remains essential and unavoidable.