Covid-19 is an ever changing virus that is the world’s biggest problem at the moment. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and millions have been infected. This problem is causing so many other issues including an estimate of 670000 jobs lost in New Zealand, 1.1 Trillion dollars will be lost, and tensions are running high between countries such as China and the USA. Covid-19 is part of a family of Coronaviruses. These viruses can cause many different infections such as the common cold, while more lethal varieties can cause illnesses called Sars and Mers. Right now, medical researchers are working around the clock to discover a vaccine for this deadly virus; and many countries are in lockdown to try and stop the spread of Covid-19. This report will show what Covid-19 is and how it originated, the effects, both here in New Zealand, and around the world, and how we might solve this pressing problem. Something needs to be done, or we might never see the light at the end of the tunnel.
What is covid-19? Covid-19 is an ever changing ever evolving virus that’s part of the coronavirus family of viruses, the coronavirus family includes SARS(Severe acute respiratory syndrome), MERS(Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and the common cold. Covid-19 is a disease caused by SARS coronavirus 2. It was first discovered/identified in December in 2019 and affects your airways, common symptoms are fever,cough,fatigue,loss of smell and shortness of breath. It spreads through close contact with others and droplets(produced when someone coughs,sneezes or just talks.) that will settle on smooth surfaces. The droplets can also be produced by just breathing but they don’t really spread through the air, instead they fall to the ground or surfaces like a coffee table for example. It can also spread if you touch a contaminated surface and then touch your face.
Here in New Zealand, Dr Ashley Bloomfield is New Zealand’s Director General of health. He is leading the charge along with the Prime Minister to fight Covid-19 here in New Zealand. The Medical Officer of Health is in contact tracing everyone who has or is suspected to have Covid-19, a key role in taking this virus down in New Zealand. We also have an Infectious Disease team working hard at all of the hospitals around the country. The whole country has worked exceptionally hard, but these people are still having to come into work every day, and continue to fight this virus.
Chinese scientists believe that Covid-19 started life in the research facility 300 yards from the Wuhan fish market. The Wuhan Center for Disease Control (WHCDC) was believed to have kept 605 disease full bats. The genome(a genome is the genetic material of an organism. DNA for animals and RNA for viruses) sequences from patients were 89% to 96% identical to Bat Cov ZC45(bat coronavirus) carried by the intermediate horseshoe bat.
Covid-19 is changing everyday. It has many countries in lockdown, which means the worlds’ economy hasn’t been able to function properly. The USA has the strongest economy in the world, and is seriously being affected by Covid-19. In early April, Donald Trump was seriously considering opening the economy back up, even if it meant that the country would be hit even harder by Covid-19. However, after thousands of deaths in a week, he came to his senses and extended the USA’s lockdown. This will mean that the share markets will drop rapidly, and all non essential workers will stop work. Some businesses in New Zealand are struggling against Covid-19. Burger King has gone into receivership, and NZME has to cut hundreds of jobs. If this lockdown continues for six months, it is estimated that almost 700000 jobs will be lost, just in New Zealand. However, the finance minister thinks that with a 20 billion dollar package, we can keep unemployment below 10% at 150000.
Covid-19 is killing more and more people every day. In February, the epicentre of Covid-19 was in Wuhan, China. It then moved onto Italy, then Spain, and the USA. It is an ever changing epidemic, and has affected people everywhere in the world. So far worldwide we have 3205995 confirmed cases and 227291 deaths as of Thursday April 30. Here in the Bay of Plenty, we are lucky. We don’t have any big clusters and we have very few cases. However, in Auckland, Wellington, Matamata, and Southland more cases are being confirmed every day and clusters have been killing many people. New Zealand’s main clusters include a wedding in bluff with 98 cases so far. Marist College in Auckland with 93 cases so far. A hospitality venue in Matamata has 76 cases. Unfortunately the virus has also found its way into a rest home (Rosewood Rest Home) in Christchurch where it has killed 10 people. Recently in New Zealand, we have seen a big decrease in cases. On Monday 27 April, we had no new confirmed cases. Jacinda Ardern and her team have done an incredible job of eradicating the virus with this lockdown. We can now hope that life might return to normal.
If you get or have Covid-19 then you should stay home and consult a gp or a nurse over the phone, you should also be washing your hands frequently(like you already should be) with soap and hot water, you should wash your hands for 20 seconds. You should wash your hands after : blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing, after going in a public place, after touching surfaces outside of your bubble, after touching money, before, after and during caring for a sick person, before and after eating, after using the toilet, after handling rubbish, after touching animals and pets and when they’re visibly dirty. The same goes to hand sanitisers, use a sanitiser that contains 60% alcohol. Rub it into your hand for 20 seconds. Pretty basic really.
Covid-19 is a respiratory illness. This means that it is mostly spread by coughing or sneezing. Many people either don’t cover their mouths, or cough into their hands. This is a good way to spread Covid-19 because the virus can live on surfaces for between 1-3 days. Anyone could touch these surfaces and spread the virus even further. A great way to stop the spread is to wash your hands frequently throughout the day. Covid-19 is an enveloped virus, which means it has a lipid bilayer. This means that there is a layer of sticky heads on the outside, making it difficult to get off with just water. However, soap has a very similar formation to the lipid bilayer of Covid-19, which makes it easier to get off your hands. This is why it is so important to wash your hands with soap.
We will never really be able to fully kill a virus, it survives in one way or another. In the end it keeps on evolving and getting stronger, until it’s a supervirus, yes I know it sounds like it comes straight out of a science fiction movie but it’s real. A supervirus is a virus with no discovered vaccine or it has evolved or built up a defence against that certain medicine. The more we use an antibiotic the weaker it becomes as the virus gets used to it.
Covid-19 has been so deadly, and it looks like it could kill hundreds of thousands more people. Medical Researchers everywhere have been working with urgency to find a vaccine. Usually, a vaccine could take years, even decades to discover. However, scientists think that they could have a vaccine ready in 12 to 18 months from now. This would be an incredible scientific feat. Progress on this life-saving vaccine is happening at breakneck speed. The first human trial for a possible vaccine was announced in March 2020. The scientists working on it in Seattle have skipped the usual phase of animal testing and moved straight onto testing humans. Two pharmaceutical giants, Sanofi and GSK of France and England have teamed up to develop a vaccine. And the University of Oxford aims to have a million doses of a vaccine by september. These research groups may have already found a possible vaccine, but there is still so much more to be done. A possible vaccine needs to be trialed to make sure it is safe. The clinical trials will also test whether the vaccine provokes a response from the immune system. The immune system has to be able to fight the very small amount of the virus being put into the body, and be able to recognize it so it can fight it again if it comes in again. The vaccine must also be medically approved before it is given. Then there is the massive task of distributing the vaccine on a worldwide scale, to potentially billions of people. It is as yet, unknown when this will be done by, however, life won’t return to how it was before this all happened, unless we find this vaccine.
The whole world will have to unite against Covid-19. Together, we will find a vaccine that will hopefully be able to eradicate the virus completely. Currently, millions of dollars are being put into research for a vaccine, and hopefully, we might be able to see the end of the terrible virus by 2022. Until then, we must abide by the lockdown rules and find creative ways to get back to how life was before this all happened. If we work hard enough together, we will look back on this time in ten years, and be happy with how quickly it was over and remember all the things we did to make this a good time for everyone. Let’s all unite against Covid-19.
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