Public health strategies aimed at the primary prevention of infectious disease, starts with tracking of possible outbreaks, tracing the modes of transmission, seeking to prevent new cases of infection from occurring by interrupting the transmission of pathogens to susceptible hosts, increasing their resistance to infection. SARS-CoV-2, the most potent killer virus has caused unprecedented pandemic worldwide. At the time of this writing, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker (coronavirus.jhu.edu), global reported cases exceed 23.6 million, with over 800,000 deaths. In the most advanced country, the USA, there are 5.5 million infected individuals, and over 174,000 deaths. Brazil (3.4 mil) and India (2.8 mil) are ranked 2nd and 3rd in terms of number of infected individuals reported. In the absence of a cure, this pandemic has become a public health providers nightmare. Early preparation, messaging, and social distancing interventions during this first phase of the pandemic, have accomplished the goal of flattening the curve in some of the countries. In an unprecedented effort, hundreds of scientists, clinicians, public health workers as well as laymen worldwide, are in race against time, to answer myriad questions raised by individuals who are under a panic, to develop better diagnostic tools (preservatives, reactants and characterization technologies), novel drugs, interventions (pharmacological and nonpharmacological), vaccines and neutralizing antibodies [1-4].

References

1. Wu F., et al. “Neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in a COVID-19 recovered patient cohort and their implications”. Med Rxiv (2020).
2. Mathew D., et al. “Deep immune profiling of COVID-19 patients reveals distinct immunotypes with therapeutic implications”. Science (2020).
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Pandemic Planning Scenarios” (2020).
4. Yan Y., et al. “The first 75 days of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak: Recent advances, prevention, and treatment”. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17 (2020): 2323.
5. Feldstein S. “The Virus That Split the World”. MIT Technology Review 123.5 (2020): 10-13.
6. Coronavirus (COVID-19): Collection of articles on Covid-19 (2020).
7. Kamps BS and Hoffman C: COVID Reference. Edition-3 Steinhauser Verlag.
8. Coronavirus (COVID-19): NEJM Journal Watch.
9. COVID-19 Resource Center-The Lancet.
10. Cohen J. “Designer antibodies could battle COVID-19 before vaccines arrive”. Science (2020).
11. Vincent MJ., et al. “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus infection and spread”. Virology Journal 69 (2005).
12. Liu J., et al. “Hydroxychloroquine, a less toxic derivative of chloroquine, is effective in inhibiting SARS CoV-2 infection In vitro”. Cell Discovery 6 (2020): 16.

Citation

Citation: Gundu HR Rao. “SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: Public Health Prevention Strategies".Acta Scientific Pharmacology 1.10 (2020): 01-04.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Gundu HR Rao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.