Globally, many countries including developed ones, are struggling to find ways to prevent the spread of coronavirus as it continues to take great toll on lives as well as economy.
It is proving more challenging for the countries, mainly developing, to allocate stations where people are placed for quarantine. Quarantining people helps to protect the public from pandemic and it proved quite useful against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) recently. However, recently, a number of asymptomatic people, with international travel history, tested positive for the coronavirus disease in Kashmir. While they were identified and kept in a quarantine facility for two weeks, they were discharged in absence of any symptoms and sent home.
Few days later, they were again taken to hospital as one of them in quarantine centre had been found positive for COVID19. What is more surprising is that they tested positive after three weeks of their arrival from Saudi Arabia.
Experts believe that there could be two reasons for them to test positive for disease behind normal schedule. Either the incubation period in these patients has been very long, which is quite rare, or they have got infected at the quarantine itself.
The later scenario is alarming as it signals that the people are not safeguarded against possible infection from each other at quarantine centres.
The administration has not ruled out the possibility of people getting exposed to virus at quarantine facility they were sharing.
The experts suggest home quarantine for asymptomatic contacts in order to avoid risk of cross infection. The asymptomatic carriers, although safe themselves, could put life of others into danger. The elderly and those with co-morbidities could get infected and it can prove life threatening for them, experts say.
Other solution to the growing problem is testing all people at the quarantine facility immediately.
If there isn’t aggressive testing, then it is possible that individuals who do not show symptoms instantly will not only continue to suffer themselves but spread the infection to others. The coronavirus is such a pestilence where people can move from mild symptoms to turning severely ill very quickly. This necessitates even more urgency for the government to intervene, isolate and offer treatment early.
