COVID-19 IN USA: Pandemic or Epidemic?

What is Covid-19 Pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic better known as coronavirus pandemic is a currently occurring worldwide pandemic of coronavirus malady 2019 originated from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS‑CoV‑2).

The upsurge was first confirmed in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The disease breakout was announced as an international pandemic by WHO(World Health Organization) on 11 March 2020. Till now( 5 July 2020) a total of 11.1 million cases have been revealed of COVID-19 in conjunction with 188 countries and territories with the emerging of around 582,000 deaths and approximately 6.03 million people have recovered.

COVID-19 in USA

The going on COVID-19 pandemic was validated to have set foot the United States in January 2020. The first verified patient of local transmission was reported in January whereas the foremost death took place in February. By the conclusion of March, cases had spread across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and all colonized US territories except American Samoa.

As of June 24, the US had the lion’s share in verified and ongoing cases and deaths in the world. The US death rate was 370 per million people, the seventh maximum rate overall the globe till June 26, 2020.

What Went Wrong?

Testing

As the disease first took place in the West Coast states of Washington and California, the US failed to execute relevant levels of contact tracing because they were so relaxed off the mark with testing.

The government in the first instance rejected to ease the regulations barriers that would have authorized states and domestic health departments to invent their test kits which were to be formed from the rules and regulations given by the WHO(World Health Organization) and all premature samples were being sent to the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The CDC too delivered defected test kits to the states which added to the delay in the testing process. The US government lifted its ban to develop test kits after a full one month of the first confirmed case. Dr Gabor Kelen, director of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University stated that if the government had done contact tracing then we might have found a lot more cases rapidly and immediately closed the hot spots.

No National Response

Heavily inhabited New York has been declared as the epicentre of the breakout with almost 45,000 cases that are about half of USA total cases and over 500 deaths included. Neighbours New Jersey followed with California and Washington state and then Michigan Illinois in the Midwest, with the bundles focused on major cities.

As of March 2020, 61 per cent of the US population of 330 million was told to be in lockdown with the remaining 30 per cent were free to move around.

“I think what we truly require at this hour is a nationally coordinated contribution by all warning that following patchwork response(one at a time) on people’s movement would lead the way to other states seeing the type of surge encountered in places like New York”, said Doctor Thomas Tsai, a general surgeon and professor of health policy at Harvard.

Size and Diversity

Enumerating more factors to the out surge size and diversity also falls as one of the reasons for the breakout. “Especially given the various approaches from across 50 states with only a few like Washington and Ohio were given appreciation for their quick responses”, stated by Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

No Funds For WHO

On May 30 2020, President of US, “Donald Trump” discontinued its relations with WHO(World Health Organization) citing that “China had full power on WHO” indicating that COVID-19 pandemic was a conspiracy of both China and WHO.

Further adding to the statement he said, “Washington will redirect its fund to other bodies”. European Union told the Trump administration to rethink about its decision stating with a warning that the decision could hinder worldwide efforts to handle the coronavirus pandemic.

Overall, the neglect to the initial ramp-up testing, contact/root tracing and seclusion of infected people and their contacts is what added as a fuel to the outbreak of COVID-19 cases in the US.

Current Scenario: Better or Worse?

One bright incident has been the fatality rate in the US based on validated cases is low so far is 1.5 per cent in comparison to Spain (7.7 per cent) and Italy(10 per cent). “But the CFR(Case Fatality Rate) low rate is not promising and the US is on the verge of a disastrous surge”, said David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.

The experts acknowledged that the nationwide social distancing measures were urgently needed to resume for infection curve to slow down or even flatten so that the hospitals aren’t flooded or overpopulated as that is the case in the New York City.

While the US is now making advancement by enlarging the testing process across the nation with the still virus being the underneath problem that has spread so far over the whole country. So the situation is still deadly if seen from the larger point of view.

(Featured Image Source: en.as.com)