Three misconceptions about COVID-19
2 years ago, in March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced COVID-19 is a global pandemic. Two months ago there were reports of a mysterious virus infecting people in Wuhan, a densely populated city in central China. According to initial assessments, the virus does not appear to be easily transmissible to humans.
But in fact, SARS-CoV-2 quickly traveled around the world and to date 460 million people have been infected. With more than 6 million deaths, COVID-19 has become one of the deadliest pandemics in history.
In its early days, we knew very little about COVID-19 and made false assumptions.
Concerned about the spread of COVID-19 through surfaces
In the early days of the pandemic, there was a view that surfaces could spread viruses. Some people wear gloves when they go to the supermarket and wash their food packages when they get home.
However, we now know that the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads mainly through droplets.
When a person coughs or sneezes, droplets containing mucus, saliva, and viral particles can land on other people or onto surfaces.
Larger droplets tend not to travel far and fall quickly. Droplets can remain in the air for a long time before settling.
Scientists now believe that contracting COVID-19 from touching contaminated surfaces is quite rare.
Many people worry about not being vaccinated
At the beginning of 2020, we don’t know if vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is possible.
There have been previous efforts to develop vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), two coronaviruses that cause similar outbreaks. Several vaccines have been in clinical trials, but none have been approved.
Before COVID-19, the fastest developed vaccine was against mumps, which took 4 years.
But within 12 months, Pfizer/BioNTech had successfully developed a vaccine. Currently, 12 vaccines are fully approved for injection in different parts of the world, 19 are for emergency use and more than 100 are in clinical trials.
Both Pfizer and Moderna have begun clinical trials of the Omicron-specific vaccine.
There are also a number of groups around the world that are developing vaccines aimed at combating all variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Some think we don’t need masks
In the early days of the pandemic, when there was no vaccine, to reduce transmission, we had to rely on personal precautions such as hand hygiene, social distancing and wearing masks.
Most agree with hand washing and social distancing measures to avoid COVID-19 infection, but masks have been controversial.
Before April 2020, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that people should not wear masks. Obviously there are two reasons for this.
First, the CDC is concerned about not having an adequate supply of surgical and N95 masks, which are essential in high-risk settings.
Second, at the time it was assumed that people with no or no symptoms could transmit the virus (we now know they can).
However, on April 3, 2020, the CDC changed and recommended that the public wear multi-layer cloth masks. Currently, people are advised to choose a mask that fits.
With the advent of Omicron, some experts believe that cloth masks are no longer suitable. Everyone should wear surgical masks, or types P2, KN95, N95.
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