A comprehensive review of COVID-19 pandemic and community mitigation strategies

• Main Authors: Tabrez Uz Zaman, Hamed Ademola Adetunji, Shamim Mohammed, El Fadil Mohammed Salih, Tariq Sultan Pasha, Moath Alsolami
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2020-01-01
• Series: Archives of Medicine and Health Sciences
• Subjects: case fatality rate; global response; community mitigation strategies; covid-19 disease; epidemiology; transmission
• Online Access: http://www.amhsjournal.org/article.asp?issn=2321-4848;year=2020;volume=8;issue=2;spage=240;epage=246;aulast=Zaman

A novel coronavirus with no previous history of causing disease in humans was reported in December 2019 in the Wuhan province of China. Different community prevention and control measures were used globally with varying outcomes to combat this pandemic. It has infected more than twelve million people worldwide and claimed more than half a million lives, the mortality, and morbidity from the disease ever-growing every day. No approved pharmaceutical intervention or vaccine is available till now, thereby requiring assessment of what has worked well to encourage sharing the best epidemiological control practices. This review aims to examine the COVID-19 epidemiology and relate this with the preventive control measures in use globally and evaluate the strategies for community mitigation to cope with the pandemic so far. A literature review comprising 55 articles and reports was undertaken between 2010 and 2020. Findings showed the person-to-person disease transmission and its severity varied among different subgroups of the populations; the elderly, the obese, and individuals experiencing underlying health complications were affected the most. Virus survival ranges from a few hours to 9 days dependent on nature and environmental conditions. Some studies indicated that there is a probability of disease spread from commonly shared toilets and through the semen of the infected patients. Lessons learned and appropriate recommendations were emphasized. It is hoped that the review will be useful to general readers, researchers, decision-makers, and frontline workers to re-examine their approaches while those communities where COVID-19 is just establishing can learn better ways to deal with it.