Make Covid-19 prevention protocols a new normal
Young people have been urged to make Covid-19 prevention protocols a part of their lives to save them from contracting the virus.
“You do not have to be afraid. This pandemic will end soon but you have to practise safe hygiene as part of a behavioural change” said the Director General of the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), Professor Alex Dodoo, in an interview.
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The World Health Organisation's special envoy for Covid-19, Dr David Nabarro, recently said the coronavirus was not going to go away so we must learn to live with it.
"We have all got to learn to live with this virus, to do our business with this virus in our presence, to have social relations with this virus in our presence and not to be continuously having to be in lockdown because of the widespread infections that can occur," Mr Nabarro added.
Prof. Dodoo said the Covid-19 pandemic was not the first pandemic to hit the world and that throughout history, every few decades, there came a dangerous form of influenza which caused diseases and death and on the average lasted about a year.
“Then we learn to live with the virus in the sense that they usually lose their effect to cause disease because we become a little bit exposed to them and become immune”, he said.
He said the most populous organisms in the atmosphere were the micro-organisms – the bacteria, virus and fungi which were more than us but we could not see them adding that we lived with them and normally overcame them because our bodies had been exposed to them and thereby developed the ability to withstand them.
He explained that viruses also change and their power to cause disease became weakened adding that some of the viruses stayed in the background causing low level diseases seasonally and as happens in some Western countries, every winter, they would flare up but vaccines had been developed against them and added to the routine seasonal flu vaccination.
Prof. Dodoo said the good news was that children appeared strong to fight the virus but it was important for them to stay at home to help stop the spread of the virus.
“Children play in close proximity with each other so when a child gets infected by the virus, he or she will easily spread it to other children. Moreover, most infected children will not show any symptoms,” he explained.
He said the new normal for children was to practise safe hygiene by washing their hands with soap under running water, and not to hug strangers or classmates, play in the sand nor put their fingers in their nostrils in order to contain the virus.
Prof. Dodoo said the coronavirus pandemic was yet another chapter in human history that humanity would have to overcome.
He said the international community was racing to find a vaccine that would protect us against the virus adding that a lot of progress was being made and most scientists agreed that one or more vaccines would be available within 12 to 18 months.
“Till that happens, let us practice good hygiene and all the other protective advice given by government,” he said.