Is common sense the biggest antidote to the coronavirus?

Aweek ago, on the morning of February 19, the first cases of Covid-19 were yet to be announced in 11 countries that are now impacted: Iran, Italy, Israel, Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Oman, Croatia, and Austria. As of yesterday evening, Iran had announced 95 confirmed cases and 15 deaths while Italy had 283 cases and seven deaths. The rest of the nations where first infections were reported over the past week have, together, announced 39 confirmed cases and, thankfully, no casualties.

Since then, however, several new travel restrictions have been announced globally, including within the GCC and the wider Middle East. That apart, several entertainment, sporting and business events have been scaled down or shuttered over the fears. Global stocks have suffered heavy losses, economies are readjusting their 2020 ambitions, safe havens like gold are scaling multiyear peaks while industrial commodities are facing weak demand-led price erosion.

Has Covid-19 crossed over from being an outbreak to becoming a pandemic already? Pandemic is derived from the Greek word pan, meaning ‘all’ and demos, or ‘people’. It is defined as ‘an outbreak of an infectious disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population’. Despite the growing numbers (more than 80,000 cases) and the increasing number of countries affected by the new coronavirus (38 excluding China), the World Health Organization (WHO) has not categorised it as a pandemic — yet. That said, the WHO is urging all countries to be in a state of preparedness to deal with such an eventuality.

Even as most countries are still focused on quarantine-led containment, it may be getting clear that it isn’t something that’s working extremely well. There is a growing body of thought that maintains that, instead of waiting for it to be technically re-categorised from outbreak to a pandemic, efforts must now swiftly move from containment to mitigation. And what would mitigation involve? Common sense. Maintaining the highest standards of personal hygiene — frequent handwashing, for instance. And, in countries reporting a flurry of new cases, social distancing (avoiding mass events and crowded enclosures, etc.). Outside of China’s Hubei province, the mortality rate of Covid-19 remains under one per cent. It’s like a dangerous variant of the flu. Let’s face it like one by strictly following the advice that international and national health authorities are disseminating.