COVID-19: Prevention versus Cure

Sep 09, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

The Minister of Health has been working assiduously to resolve the issues with the COVID-19 Hospital, securing increased testing capacity and turnaround, access to vaccine and improved therapeutics for the treatment of persons infected with COVID-19. These are all praiseworthy efforts.
As a result of his efforts, more persons who get infected will survive the ordeal; in other words, less will die. Effectively, his efforts will save lives.
Now that he has dealt with these issues, I am calling on the Minister of Health to now focus his ministry on preventing/restricting the spread of the virus. Both WHO and PAHO have clear guidelines for Contact Tracing and Isolation. By rigorously employing Contact Tracing and Isolation Strategies, he can take control of the infected and the pre-infected persons and prevent them from spreading the virus.
Curative Therapeutics is good but prevention is better.
It is a fact that we cannot open up the economy unless we get the virus under control. The spreaders in this country makes up less than 1 (one) percent of the population. How hard is it for the authorities to understand that identifying this 1 percent and controlling them is the only way to reduce the spread? It is the only means by which we have to get to an open economy.
Given that the virus spreaders make up only about 1 percent of the population, masks and social distancing are 99% (ninety nine percent) ineffective; in other words, it achieves nothing 99% of the time. It is not the most effective way to control or prevent the spread.
It is good to know that in the event of infection, we will have good therapeutics for treatment. However, I think most people would prefer not to get sick with Covid-19.
I call upon the Ministry of Health to improve prevention (reduce virus spread) by implementing widespread Contact Tracing and Isolation Strategies.

Yours respectfully,
Sase Shewnarain

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