Question

1. Is the Epidemiological Triangle being used appropriately?

b. What reactions do you have to the approach to "contact-tracing" being employed in this outbreak?

c. Do you have suggestions as to other tools that these public health workers might use to trace their patients and convince them to enter treatment?

d. Should more aggressive public-safety measures be employed, perhaps even quarantine?

e. Consider COVID-19. Comment on how contact tracing is being employed in our current health crisis.

Answer 1

Question: Is the Epidemiological Triangle being used appropriately?

Sol:

The epidemiological triangle is a model used to study and combat infectious diseases like COVID-19. This triad has three parts like the

a) Infectious agent

b) Host

c) Environment (extrinsic factor)

Agent:

The agent here COVID-19 virus is studied for its characters like the strain, virulence, and pathogenicity.

It is found that the virus is undergoing mutations and some strains of viruses are very virulent and infectious. Some studies mention that the D614G strain to be more infectious than others. The identification of a viral strain structure can help the development of a suitable vaccine.

Host: The human is the host in this pandemic and the following factors of the host are studied like the

a) age

b) Gender

c) comorbidities

d) Viral susceptibility

Age: It is found that mortality is higher in old age people than in younger patients.

Gender: The chances of infection with viruses are the same for both the sexes. But some studies indicate higher deaths in men compared to women.

Comorbidities: The people with underlying problems like obesity, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, hypertension, COPD like disease have a greater risk of developing sever illness due to COVID-19 infection.

Virus Susceptibility: Not all people exposed to the virus can developed infection. This susceptibility varies based on immune function and presence of other diseases. It is found that people with COPD have 4-fold greater chances to get COVID-19 infection than others.

Environment: The infection depends on factors like climate, social factors like crowding, sanitation, health care availability etc.

In climatic conditions like cold temperatures mortality rate was quite high. Similarly, infection spread is higher in crowded places. The rate of death is more with limitation in health care facilities like lack of sufficient ventilators, oxygen supply.

So, the epidemiological triad is being used effectively by trying to study the virus strain to develop the vaccine, identifying the people with greater chances of infection and mortality and providing better health care to them while advising other to go for home quarantine. To minimize the infections due to overcrowding, there are lock downs and encouragement to use masks in public places.

b. What reactions do you have to the approach to "contact-tracing" being employed in this outbreak?

Contact-tracing:

This is a process of identifying those people who have come in direct contact with the infected person. This is essential to break the transmission chains and minimize the further spread of infections. Contact tracing help to minimize implementation of lock downs too.

The methods used for contact-tracing include

i) employment of manual tracers who have access to diagnosis data,

ii) Using case management software to maintain cloud based case records and tracing activities.

ii) Use of digital tracking software by the use of mobile phone tooth connections etc.

The contact-tracing methods are quite effective to minimize the spread of infection. But there is a need for privacy protection and confidentiality.

Further, contact-tracing is reliable for those infection which show immediate symptoms of disease but for diseases like COVID-19 where the symptoms are non-existent for long periods it is unreliable.

C. Do you have suggestions as to other tools that these public health workers might use to trace their patients and convince them to enter treatment?

The public health workers should use other methods to improve this contact tracing. They can go for methods like attentive interviews, mobile phone data analysis, use of financial transaction data, GPS tracking, etc in collaboration with governments.

Once, the person are identified to be in contact with the infected persons, health care workers can convince them about importance of treatment to avoid development of serious illness based on their age or presence of comorbidities.

d. Should more aggressive public-safety measures be employed, perhaps even quarantine?

The current measures of public-safety are sufficient to counter the pandemic. When a person is diagnosed to have infection self quarantine and isolated health care is sufficient. The public should be encouraged for self reporting and taking medical help.

e. Consider COVID-19. Comment on how contact tracing is being employed in our current health crisis.

In current health crisis, contact-tracing has helped in limiting the spread of infection and encouraged more US states to lift the lockdown orders.

When there are high number of cases in a particular region, implementation of partial lock downs and rigorous contact tracing helps to limit further spread of infection.