Patient Population Problem - Free Essay Example

Introduction

COVID-19 is a global pandemic that is highly transmissible. It is spread in several ways such as a healthy individual’s mucosae being in direct contact with the respiratory droplets of an infected individual or being in indirect contact with the respiratory droplets through fomites found in the environment. Airborne transmission also occurs whereby infected droplets persist in the air for a long time and can be spread to others over distances that are greater than 1 meter. A large number of COVID-19 patients are asymptomatic and approximately all have a prior symptomatic incubation period that lasts between 2 to 15 days (Howard et al., 2020). The ability for these patients to infect others is highest during the early stages of the infection when symptoms are absent or mildest. These features differentiate COVID-19 from infection with other viruses (Howard et al., 2020). This analysis considers the use of face masks which are personal protective equipment as a measure to protect individuals in the community from direct and indirect transmission of COVID-19 through respiratory droplets.

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Intervention

Simple respiratory protection is delivered through the use of cloth masks and other common fabric material used to make face masks. Studies conducted on the efficacy of masks suggest that face masks have a critical role in source control and acquisition of infection for the current coronavirus outbreak (Howard et al., 2020). According to Kähler & Hain (2020), masks are made of various materials and designs which influence the capacity to which viruses can be filtered in order to protect the wearer from infectious particles or from transmitting the infection. Comparing the efficacy of filtration between surgical masks and cloth masks, the latter had between 3% to 60% filtration rates for particles in the relevant size range, making their usefulness comparable to some surgical masks. In another study, it was established that a mask made out of tea cloth was filters 61% of relevantly-sized particles while surgical masks filtered 74% (Howard et al., 2020) also state that because it is difficult to always access quality commercial masks, a company made masks from heavyweight T-shirts and a test conducted on them showed that they offered significant protection from the test aerosol and exhibited decent fit with minimal leakage.

Other fabrics that have been recommended for designing face masks to act as personal protective equipment include coffee filter and paper towel. A study that examined health workers in the community gave 2 new surgical masks to one group and gave 5 cloth face masks to a control group (Kähler & Hain, 2020). Both groups were required to wear the masks the whole day for 4 weeks; this is referred to as high level of usage of masks as described by many hospital protocols. Ethics in research limited the existence of a control group with “no mask”. As per the results, there were significantly lower rates of a viral infection in the group that had steady supply of fresh surgical masks; this shows that as much as the use of masks in preventive against respiratory viral infections, the use of clean masks is superior. In general, if everyone puts on a mask, they decrease the chance of them unknowingly infecting someone or getting infected.

Comparison

Since around the 19th century, persons have known that the practice of proper hygiene is useful in preventing microbes from transmitting infectious diseases from one person to another. Even though a lot of research has been conducted to explain the manner in which proper hygiene stops the spread of viral respiratory infections, there is somewhat insufficient information of how well it specifically prevents the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus. According to Mushi & Shao (2020), observation of hand hygiene was responsible for a 17% reduction in the number of patients suffering from an acute respiratory infection in a study that was conducted. Reviewers of many such studies have come to a conclusion that the existing evidence for reducing the burden of acute respiratory infections rationalizes the enforcement of standard recommended measures for proper hygiene to decrease the spread of viral respiratory infections (Mushi & Shao, 2020).

Furthermore, a COVID-19 study conducted in one of the hospitals in Wuhan, China concluded that poor hygiene fell under the category of major risk factors for the spread of the disease (Shenge & Opayele, 2020). The same study also indicated that a high risk for contracting COVID-19 persisted even amidst the use of personal protective equipment; this suggested that proper hygiene was more critical than putting on a face mask. Some people would take such findings to mean that face masks are completely not useful, but that would not be correct due to the existing variation in results of this study was too big to come up strong conclusions.

Conclusion

According to the results, depending on the fabric of a face mask, there is provision of marginal protection against nanoparticles including those in the size ranges of virus-containing particles in exhaled breath. Additionally, the use of a single intervention such as proper hygiene or wearing face masks propagates the spread of infectious diseases because it is expected that not every person will apply the recommended guiding principles therefore, there is a loophole for the spread of infection in that intervention. However, the use of multiple interventions is relevant to decreasing the transmission of COVID-19.

References

Howard, J., Huang, A., Li, Z., Tufekci, Z., Zdimal, V., van der Westhuizen, H. M., & Tang, V. (2020). Face masks against COVID-19: an evidence review.

Kähler, C. J., & Hain, R. (2020). Fundamental protective mechanisms of face masks against droplet infections. Journal of Aerosol Science, 148, 105617.

Mushi, V., & Shao, M. (2020). Tailoring of the ongoing water, sanitation and hygiene interventions for prevention and control of COVID-19. Tropical medicine and health, 48(1), 1-3.

Shenge, J. A., & Opayele, A. V. (2020). The Impact and Control of Emerging and Re-Emerging Viral Diseases in the Environment: An African Perspective. In Current Microbiological Research in Africa (pp. 185-202). Springer, Cham.