Improving Our Efforts to Halt The COVID-19 Pandemic
Richard G. Lanzara, MPH, Ph.D.
Scientist / Author ● Pharmacology ● Biomedical Sciences ● Computational Biology ● Biophysics ● Physiology ● GPCRs ● Applied Mathematics
An Outline for Public Health Practices
The COVID-19 pandemic has blindsided us in many ways. People who feel ill are staying at home. Many people who are staying at home with mild to moderate symptoms are not tested. Therefore, these people are not being counted in the number of current cases. Some estimates suggest that the actual number of infections are two to ten times the reported numbers. These largely unknown and ignored cases greatly hinder our attempts to understand and halt this pandemic.
Our public healthcare systems were never able to effectively fight this pandemic. This reality is especially true if we also attempt to assist those people who are at home who are not tested or receiving the proper care. Many more public healthcare workers are needed to fight this pandemic. We need people who can discover new cases and follow up with contact tracing. Many more workers are also needed to better coordinate public health measures, such as for vaccinations, clinical trials to find effective antiviral agents, proper cleaning and disposal of contaminated items, and effective quarantine measures.
Ideally, better home care would greatly help control the pandemic’s spread and alleviate the huge stain on our overwhelmed hospitals. However, those who are staying at home may have little to no support or guidance. This support and guidance might be as simple as giving them information about proper home care. More extensive support would also provide for at home testing, food delivery, or infection control equipment (PPE) for those caring for and living with them. Air exchange at home or within public buildings is most easily assessed with a simple CO2 meter. However, relatively simple measures such as ensuring that there is enough air exchange can be done by simply cracking a window in a room, or a car or other similarly confined space where the air flow is not optimal. Best practices for at home care should be determined and widely shared by our public health and medical professionals.
COVID is spread not only by air borne contamination. There are cases that show that touching a public bathroom doorknob can infect someone. This means that people should be encouraged to wear gloves in public. People also need to be instructed to use a paper towel to turn off faucets and to open the door in public bathrooms. Handwashing is not enough.
Since it may be many months before anyone receives their first vaccine dose, there needs to be more research into simple treatments that could be done at home. Besides repositioning our drugs, we might try such simple treatments as a warm bath with a quarter to a half a cup of bleach (hypochlorite). Bleach is a known and effective antiviral compound. Bleach was used and found to be safe as a disinfectant in dentistry and has been used for decades for wound treatment as Dakin’s solution. Most of the toxicity of bleach comes from its high pH which stabilizes the hypochlorite ion. Therefore, it needs to be diluted just before use. I have personally used diluted bleach with no ill effects.
Instead of relying solely on vaccines, these are just some of the additional public health measures that need to be disseminated and tried for all of us to defeat this pandemic.
Richard G. Lanzara, MPH, Ph.D.
Some of my previous posts about the COVID-19 pandemic:
One year ago, I posted this:
Unfortunately, we seem to be headed for a worldwide epidemic of the Wuhan Coronavirus, which has as yet, an indeterminate incubation period and a fatality rate of about 3%. Those responsible for declaring this an emergency should have done so earlier, but it is still time to do so. To follow the outbreak in almost real time see this worldwide map (you have to scroll out to see the rest of the map). - https://lnkd.in/dXkUDDb
On 2/25/2020, I posted this:
Necessary Actions to Contain the Novel Cornavirus-2019 (2019-nCoV) Outbreak
On March 20, 2020, I posted this:
Our Current Public Health Measures to Control the Coronavirus Pandemic