Malta will close all bars, restaurants, gyms, casinos, cinemas and bingo halls as of today, Prime Minister Robert Abela has announced.
Restaurants will still be able to provide deliveries to people’s homes.
The Prime Minister’s decision, intended to ensure as much social distancing as possible, comes shortly after Malta confirmed its first three locally transmitted cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
He said these new measures, recommended by the public health authorities, are intended to slow down the rate of new coronavirus cases and will hopefully prevent the government from imposing a total lockdown.
Social distancing means limiting all kinds of interactions with other people – be it friends, relatives or at the market – wherever possible. That also means severely limiting the amount of shopping trips you go to. With this in mind, here’s some supplies you should keep in mind and handy in your home:
Food:
Medical:
Household
Animals:
Wellness:
Kids:
Discuss COVID-19 with your kids and explain how the infections and quarantines will affect many families and their ability to feed themselves.
Take the opportunity to teach your kids to help their community.
We believe fear should never dictate our actions, but we also believe prevention is better than cure.
Stock up on the above, practice good hygiene and pay attention to updates in your area. And if you find yourself at a Purell-free CVS, never fear, alcohol-based sanitizers are certainly handy on the go, but washing your hands with soap for at least 20 seconds is still the best way to avoid COVID-19.
With all the information about coronavirus coming at us at full force, it can be hard to know what to do during this time. It might be a flu, but it did manage to shut down most countries.
Emerging consensus is that containment might have been possible a few weeks ago, but is no longer realistic. We are entering the pandemic phase which will be followed by seasonal recurrence of the disease unless and until we have a vaccine (which may still be 18-24 months away, if we are lucky).
With this in mind, the goal for every community moving forward is to slow down the spread of coronavirus.
First priority? Where possible, cancel everything and stay in. Social distancing is the most effective way to combat the coronavirus. This means staying away from friends and family too.
The key goal for every community is to “flatten the curve” by slowing down the spread of coronavirus through quarantines and social distancing. Should the virus spread quickly and our healthcare system fail to deal with the uptick in new cases, both mortality rates and costs can skyrocket.
As we try to slow the spread of the virus so as not to overwhelm our health systems, staying inside as much as possible is key.
Malta has already done a great job at this, rolling out tests with efficiency and keeping the public continuously informed.
On Monday, Public Health Superintendent Charmaine Gauci announced nine new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total to 30. For the first time, three of the cases were local transmission, after people who came home from abroad infected co-workers. The three local transmissions are healthcare professionals, who contracted the virus from healthcare workers who tested positive after returning from holiday.
This leaves locals – especially older people – and their families wondering what extra precautions they should take. Several best practices have been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, geriatricians and infectious diseases specialists.
“If someone is using the same pair gloves constantly, it’s as if you’re not wearing any, because the contagion can still spread,” she said.
“At best, warm weather might influence the spread but it will not see the end of it,” said Dale Fisher, chair of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network coordinated by the World Health Organization.
“What is important is how effectively countries are isolating cases, removing people from communities. That’s the biggest factor, not the weather.”
If you think you’re sick as a result of the novel coronavirus, you can help safeguard your loved ones and community by staying at home, except to get medical care.
The current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that you call a medical professional if you notice symptoms and
DO NOT GO to Mater Dei, the emergency department, health centres, private clinics, or pharmacies. Stay home and call the public health authority’s helpline 111.
You can call +356 21324086 for advice.
Avoid calling 112 unless it is a real emergency. That emergency line is crucial in saving lives in peril, and having it be flooded with calls on the coronavirus could have fatal consequences.
If you’re sick with coronavirus and your conditions aren’t severe, you’rel ikely going to be asked to self-quarantine. This means you should:
The outbreak was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019 and recognised as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020
1. It is pretty large in size (cell is about 400-500nm diameter), so any normal mask (not just the N95 feature) should be able to filter it out. However, when someone who’s infected sneezes in front of you, it will take a great 3 meters (about 10 feet) before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne.
2. When the virus drops on metal surface, it will live for at least 12 hours. So remember if you come in contact with any metal surface, wash your hands with soap thoroughly.
3. The virus can remain active on fabric for 6-12 hours. Normal laundry detergent should kill the virus. But if you are really worried, you can add some non-chlorine bleach or oxygen bleach . For winter clothing that does not require daily washing, you can put it out under the sun to kill the virus.
For most members of society, coronavirus may only cause some flu-like symptoms, but for vulnerable groups, coronavirus is likely to need serious medical attention. With this in mind, we must do our best to ensure as few of these people as possible get Covid-19. Should many cases that require hospitalisation occur at the same time, our hospitals may not be able to cope, risk the further proliferation of the virus, and skyrocket economic costs.
You are more at risk of serious illness if you catch coronavirus and you:
There are many things that can cause a weak immune system (immunosuppressed).
These include:
Other lung viruses can cause severe illness in people who have a weak immune system. This is likely to be the same for coronavirus. This is why you should take extra care if you have a weak immune system. This is similar for other infections, such as flu.
Phone your doctor if you have any symptoms of coronavirus and are concerned.
Continue to attend for any planned treatment, unless you have been told not to. If you have been in close contact with someone with coronavirus, phone the hospital before your appointment.
1. It will first infect the throat, so the throat will have the dry sore throat feeling which will last for 3 to 4 days
2. Then the virus will blend into the nasal fluid and drips into the trachea and enter the lungs, causing pneumonia. This process will take 5 to 6 days.
3. With pneumonia, comes high fever and difficulty in breathing. The nasal congestion is not like the normal kind. You will feel like you are drowning in water.
The term “flatten the curve” refers to the act of dispersing the burden on our healthcare system by slowing down local transmission of the virus. By imposing quarantines and social distancing, the number of sick people remains low enough at every given point for the hospitals, doctor and healthcare infrastructure to effectively manage.
In an article, the Washington Post illustrated through simulations how extensive social distancing is perhaps the most effective way to combat the coronavirus disease. Below, four figures showcase the efficiency of different measures in combatting the virus.
The light blue area refers to people who do not get the virus, the brown curve represents the number of people who catch the virus, whereas the violet part denotes people who catch but then fully recover from the virus.
While many young people can do without nonessential doctor visits, many older adults have issues that require regular follow up, such as dementia, Parkinson’s disease, falls and heart problems. Skipping visits might allow these conditions to spiral out of control, so it would be wise for doctors in Malta to consider finding ways to communicate and assess their patients online to bridge the gap. Most senior citizens in Malta have access to Facebook or Whatsapp, which should make a video-call relatively easy. Payments required can be recorded and then paid at a later date. Younger kids and tech-savvy people should consider giving their older relatives a quick tutorial on how to accept a video-call.
Government’s measures to help businesses weather the economic impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus will have “no impact and are no way close to what businesses need to sustain jobs”, the Chamber of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises has warned.
“The government seems not to be understanding the dire situation Maltese businesses are in. Businesses need real measures now and today as they will not be able to sustain their workforce any more,” the Chamber said.
The majority of the chamber, comprised of a plurality of business leaders in Malta, accused the government of secretly placing the burden of quarantine leave on the businesses.
“The Chamber of SMEs pertinently points out that this means that government wants employers to bear the cost entirely and for the days to be added over and above the current employee leave entitlement.”
“The government must now put money where its mouth is because talk is cheap, and time is running out.”
Around 5% of the Chamber’s members have begun reporting redundancies, while another 5% have released people on unpaid leave. Approximately 20% are experiencing problems in paying their wages.
With no cash flowing in from turnocver, measures by the government offer only a temporary lifeline, the chamber warned.
The Chamber also called on the government to immediately cover two-thirds of businesses’ wage bill across the board, including self-employed. There should also be moratoria from banks for loan and overdraft repayments for the next few months.
A suspension of taxation, moratoria on fines, and guarantees of transportation of goods should also be secured.
Since the World Health Organisation labelled the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) a pandemic, a plurality of countries around the world have taken drastic measures to limit the impact and proliferation of the disease.
With 24,747 cases and 1,809 deaths by this Sunday, Italy’s experience has offered an alarming example for what other European countries can expect to happen if the spread of the virus is not slowed down.
Following Italy, Spain has also seen its number of coronavirus deaths more than double in a day to 288.
Spaniards, housebound by law since Saturday, emerged on balconies and stood at windows on Sunday evening to whoop and beep horns in appreciation of emergency services dealing with Europe’s second-worst outbreak after Italy.
The government’s official coronavirus death toll rose by 152 overnight to 288. The number of infected rose by 2,000 cases to 7,753. Schools across the country are closed, keeping millions of children at home. Social gatherings are likewise banned.
And in the US, The Atlantic could only verify that 1,895 people have been tested for the coronavirus in the United States, about 10 percent of whom have tested positive. With a population of 327.2 million, this suggests that the American response to the coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has been shockingly sluggish, especially compared with that of other developed countries.
Political scientist Ian Bremmer noted on Twitter that the spread of Corona virus in the US seems to be heading down the same scary trajactory as Italy.
In the UK, well-known scientists and politicians criticised Boris Johnson’s government’s strategy for fighting coronavirus, which takes a markedly different approach than most European governments and, despite Friday’s announcement, remains in place.
At the heart of that outcry: a policy to push for “herd immunity” to the virus, which would involve allowing at least 40 million Britons to become infected in the hopes of building up a long-term, society-wide resistance to the disease.
The U.K.’s approach means many healthy people in the country have to get the disease—while keeping the fatality rate as low as possible. It’s a marked break with the approach in much of the rest of the world, which is to stop people from getting coronavirus, period.
“I’ve been talking to other academics, science journalists, private companies, & gov’t people all of today and still struggling to understand this,” Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh tweeted. “The gov’t seems to be following flu playbook strategy. But this is not the flu. COVID-19 is much worse & health outcomes are sobering.”
Multiple lawmakers have proposed economic stimulus packages and universal basic income programs as the coronavirus begins to take a larger toll on the American economy.
On Friday, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a 2020 presidential candidate, introduced a resolution that would provide an income of $1,000 a month to every American “until COVID-19 no longer presents a public health emergency.”
In an effort to stop the spread of the virus, the U.S. has imposed travel bans on several countries hardest-hit by the pandemic, and dozens of large events and conferences have been canceled or postponed.
The stock market had its worst losses since 1987 on Thursday, though it’s unclear exactly how many workers will be affected.
Earlier in March, Jason Furman, a professor of the practice of economic policy at Harvard and chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration from 2013 through 2017, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for fiscal stimulus in the form of a one-time cash payment in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Scientists are working tirelessly to develop a vaccine,” Furman wrote. “But these are no reasons to delay putting out a generally applicable economic medicine that would help in any downturn.”
While the call for UBI cash payments has seen renewed life as the coronavirus upends the lives and paychecks of many Americans, it is also still polarizing.
Most cases are not life-threatening, and a great number of people may barely show any symptoms, which is also what makes the virus COVID-19 a historic challenge to contain.
17 years ago, in Hong Kong, a boy fell sick with the flu and, despite intensive care, died. A month later, virulogists found the cause: HFN1, an ‘avian flu’, or what people now refer to as the ‘bird flu’. Unlike Coronavirus, the avian flu was killing almost every human it infected. Global response took over a month, but by the end of the year there were only 18 known cases in humans. Six people died.
“I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.”
Marc Lipsitch
Meanwhile, according to John Hopkins University, coronavirus deaths passed 6,500 worldwide as of today. Due to lack of testing in some parts of the world, the number may be higher
This virus is unlike most that capture public imagination: It is deadly, but not too deadly. It makes people sick, but not in predictable, uniquely identifiable ways. At the same time, we are far better equipped globally than we were with the “bird flu”, which took over a month. The new coronavirus was identified extremely quickly. Its genome was sequenced by Chinese scientists and shared around the world within weeks. Work on a vaccine is well underway.
But, as asserted by Harvard epidemiology professed Marc Lipsitch, it’s likely that most will eventually get infected. Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.
He, along with other experts, clarify that for a majority of those infected, it’s likely they’ll only experience “mild disease or may experience no symptoms at all.”
“cold and flu season” could become “cold and flu and COVID-19 season.”
As with influenza, while it is often life-threatening to people with chronic health conditions and of older age, most cases pass without medical care. The Atlantic go into more detail in this article.
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