COMMENT | Malaysia's health authorities must rise above politics to combat the Covid-19 threat.
| Coronavirus is a generic name. It has been around, by some scientific estimates, for close to 60 years. But the species that host it was a range of animals ranging from civet cats to monkeys and bats, if not more.
The best analogy is HIV or Human Immuno Virus. When one is identified as HIV-positive, without proper medicine or a combination of medicine, one is liable to becoming perennially sick. The latter is Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome . Sars Cov II, for the lack of a better word, triggers Covid-19.As of March 4, WHO has raised Covid-19 to the highest alert level short of calling it a pandemic.
While the Covid-19 has the effect of disrupting the economic, manufacturing and supply chain activities in China, it is also affecting the world as 20 percent of the world's total production is reliant on China, as opposed to three percent in 2003, and jamming up global commerce completely. Scientists have shown that Covid-19 appears to be more lethal on males, especially those with chronic diseases such as diabetes, bronchitis and asthma.
As things are, the deputy minister of health has caught it as did the vice-president of Iran and the advisor to President Khamenei. The latter has passed away too. Indeed,In Malaysia, Patient 26 has been in close contact with his staff and various officials, leading to the infection of 19 people out of a total of 50 patients in the country to date. As this is written, some 189 patients who have undergone tests have not received their health status or clearance yet.
Mordena, a US pharmaceutical firm, as well as Japan's Fujifilm Toyama Chemical Co Ltd, which also operates in Malaysia, are doing their earnest to develop a vaccine. But the likelihood of an effective vaccine which can be deployed on all human population across the entire face of the world is likely to be a year to one-and-a-half years away.
Covid-19 is extremely smart too. It first tries to break into the Ribonucleic Acid , a biological mechanism that is involved in transmitting key health information to one's DNA.
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