Onumba.com —- It is really great to see the speedy approval of COVID-19 vaccine in Europe and now in the United States. After nearly a year of this lethal virus, we can now see some light at the end of this long dark tunnel. The pandemic, which has battered the economy, left millions jobless and businesses struggling, is now claiming more than 3,000 lives daily in the United States, with thousands more hospitalized and fighting for their lives.
Cape Town, South Africa
The novel and highly touted vaccine finally offers an offensive weapon to go after it.
But even with the vaccine soon to start flowing into people’s arms, medical experts warn that the preventive measures of masking, hand washing and social distancing must not be abandoned yet, cautioning that those life saving practices remain the key to fighting the spread of the virus.
So while vaccine is around the corner, the battle is not over yet. Heightened vigilance is still needed.
At the core of the fight against COVID-19 is the ability to detect and isolate those who are manifesting symptoms of the virus. COVID comes with a miscellany of symptoms, notably fever, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, headache, fatigue or muscle aches and loss or distorted sense of taste or smell.
But of those symptoms, one stands out as being almost sure harbinger you have the virus, and that is, loss of sense of taste or smell. Yep, if you have lost yours, chances you have COVID-19 are staggeringly elevated. Contact your primary care physician immediately to go get tested.
But Dr. Fauci and other proponents of home testing say that simple, cheap home kits could allow people to take daily tests before going to work in an office, grocery store or restaurant or before going to school (although it’s still not clear how well the tests work in children). Rapid testing at home a few days a week could potentially identify an infection even before a person develops symptoms . “I have been pushing for that,” Dr. Fauci said. “I think home testing is the same as a pregnancy test and should be available to people. As long as there is some Covid around, then I think a home test would be useful.”