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As long as you are looking at South Korea for guidance.
Lee Wang-jun, the leader of the Working Group of the Korean Hospital Association's COVID-19 Emergency Response Headquarter and chairman of Myongji Hospital, also said the country needed a long-term measure to fight COVID-19, given that community-acquired infections were gradually rising nationwide, setting aside Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province.
“We hope that this upward trend could peak in late March or early April and recede later on. Even if we get a respite in late April, the outbreak is likely to continue throughout this year and maybe into next year, or a year after that,” Lee said.
Lee predicted that the influx of the pandemic would become a new source of infections, and sporadic cluster infections will continue. Even if a treatment is developed, it will mainly treat pneumonia in severe patients, he noted.
“It is difficult to expect a drug like Tamiflu, and the vaccine development seems to be also challenging,” he added.
Lee warned that repeated spreads of COVID-19 could occur when the following conditions were met: a global pandemic, an explosive rise of COVID-19 patients in the U.S. and Europe, the inefficiency of the healthcare system of the U.S., the winter in the southern hemisphere, and the possibility of COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease in Africa.
Although the next two weeks are crucial to prevent a further spread of COVID-19, people should not expect that temporary social distancing would end the pandemic early and return to normal, Lee warned.
“You should not make a strategy with an expectation for an end. We can’t go back to normal. We should prepare for the new normal of an infectious disease era,” he emphasized.
Lee called for reorganizing the Korean healthcare system to prepare for a long-term battle against the virus.
“The healthcare system should be changed to fight a sustainable battle, not an emergency maneuvering battle,” he said.
Lee proposed dividing the emergency medical capacity all focused on COVID-19 containment into two – a stable medical system to respond to the virus infection and a normal patient care system.
“The government should reorganize the regional control towers so that the government-led disease control leadership does not create conflict with the on-site medical workers,” he said.
Korean society needs a new philosophy and a creative disease control strategy for a long-term fight. People should know that the medical workers’ dedication and citizens’ participation are most important to efficiently choose and focus resources and workforce, and distribute and manage them, Lee added.
Meanwhile Trump* unwittingly lets Pence propose the Rapture in the weeks after Easter.
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