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Roadblocks and COVID-19: Hope and Strict Control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2020

Beuy Joob*
Affiliation:
Private Academic Practice, Bangkok, Thailand
Viroj Wiwanitkit
Affiliation:
Ajeenkya D Y Patil University, Pune, India Hainan Medical University, Haikou, China
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Beuy Joob, Private Academic Practice, Bangkok, Thailand (e-mail: beuyjoob@hotmail.com)
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Abstract

Type
Letter to the Editor
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

We read the publication titled “Roadblocks to Infection Prevention Efforts in Healthcare SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 Response” with great interest.Reference Popescu1 Popescu noted that “Awareness of these competing priorities and the challenges infection prevention programs face when working to maintain biopreparedness is critical in adequately addressing this critical infrastructure in the face of an international outbreak."Reference Popescu1 Our setting, Thailand, was the second country with a documented COVID-19 patient case.Reference Yasri and Wiwanitkit2 The disease has existed for many months and several infection control attempts, including implementing a curfew, have been used. The priorities might be important, but strict control requires a broad collaboration. In Thailand, the local Center of Disease Control follows International Health RegulationsReference Hinjoy, Tsukayama and Chuxnum3-Reference Bedford, Enria and Giesecke5 with worldwide standard infection control measures followed. Public place closures, limitation of public transportation, and promotion of social distancing are observed.Reference Mak, Lim and Thanaphollert4 In fact, in many countries some people are still venturing outside with limited transportation, demonstrating that the social distancing campaign may be less than successful.Reference Lewnard and Lo6 Insufficient supplies of personal protective equipment and face masks are another serious problem.Reference Gasmi, Noor and Tippairote7 Similar to many countries, there is a requirement for valid risk management strategies in Thailand.Reference Stone, Kunaviktikul, Omura and Petrini8 Surprisingly, some local primary care center staff have poor knowledge of the disease and do not recognize the standard disease control concept.Reference Apaijitt and Wiwanitkit9

There must be hope for controlling COVID-19, but it must be based on a directional plan against the emerging disease.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

References

REFERENCES

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