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COVID-19, that stands for Corona Virus Disease in the year 2019 is a recent pandemic. It has spread to 172 counties out of 195 countries across the world as on March 29, 2020 (RT Magazine, 2020).
The current outbreak of novel corona virus was first reported in Wuhan city of China on December 31, 2019. The Republic of China recognized the new virus in January, 2020 and took utmost care to contain the spread of virus. On January 13, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 outside of China was confirmed. However, it spread very fast to the other parts of the country and impacted other countries by the end of January 2020. The outbreak was recognized as a Public Health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020 (WHO, 2020b). On March 11, 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) characterized COVID-19 as a Pandemic. WHO reported COVID-19 as first pandemic caused by novel corona virus which is difficult to be controlled at the same time (WHO, 2020b).
Corona virus is a large family of viruses that causes the symptoms ranging from common cold to more severe diseases. The novel corona virus disease was given the name COVID-19 on February 11, 2020 by WHO. On January 25, 2020, WHO launched its first free online introductory course on COVID-19. On March 7, 2020, COVID-19 affected cases touched the figure 100,000. And then the surge started in the COVID spread. Total confirmed cases across world are 23,057,288 and total reported deaths are 800,906, according to WHO as on August 08, 2020 (WHO, 2020a). Figure 1 shows the region wise cases of COVID-19 as on August 08, 2020.
Although the nature of COVID-19 spread cannot be specified, but few characteristics define the nature of the novel coronavirus as (Shaw, Kim, & Hua, 2020):
High rate of spread: The virus is spreading very fast and within three months of its outbreak it has spread globally and has been characterized as a pandemic. It has very high rate of people to people transmission.
Figure 1. Region wise cases of COVID-19
Aged and people with weak immunity are more vulnerable: The data of affected people shows that aged population and people with low immunity are more vulnerable to this virus.
Different recovery rate: The COVID -19 recovery rate of countries is relatively low. Different countries show differential recovery rate. However, China, Republic of Korea and Japan have shown relatively fast recovery rate. USA, Europe and Iran have shown relatively slower recovery rate.
With the spread of COVID-19, several terms like “quarantine”, “social distancing”, “community spread”, “isolation”, and “lockdown”, to name a few, have become quite evident. To contain the spread of COVID-19, WHO has advised the countries to maintain as much social distancing as possible. Social distancing is a measure taken to prevent the spread of contagious diseases by maintaining a safe distance with other people and reducing the number of times people come in close contact with each other. To ensure social distancing, several countries have issued a lockdown. China, the original epicentre of COVID-19 had announced lockdown on January 23, 2020 which lasted for 76 days (Kaplan, Frias, & Mcfall-Johnsen, 2020). India announced lockdown on March 22, 2020 which is still going on (Economic Times, 2021). Lockdown is the situation in which people are not allowed to enter or leave building or area because of emergency. Owing to the lockdown situation, people move out of their houses to access only the essential services like grocery services, healthcare services, government services, and banking services to name a few.