With so much conflicting information about the coronavirus pandemic on the internet, the World Economic Forum asked their Instagram followers to submit questions about the crisis.
Experts from around the world — including Dean, Professor Teo Yik Ying, and Dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Michelle Williams — answered questions like:
- Can you have COVID-19 and show no symptoms?
- Can one get coronavirus for a second time?
- How long can the virus survive on surfaces?
- Is it possible that one day this will happen again?
- Is there any vaccine for this virus?
On how attention to other major illnesses (like cancer) has been affected, Prof Teo said:
The diversion of healthcare resources to manage the COVID-19 crisis has significantly affected the ability of many health systems to maintain standards of care for patients with other medical conditions.
Hospitals in the worst-affected countries are struggling to keep pace with the number of admissions from the coronavirus alone, and have almost zero capacity to cope with other conditions.
Even in countries that are not as badly affected, many hospitals have now deferred elective surgeries, redirected any upper respiratory tract infection or pneumonia cases to isolation wards, and cancelled or postponed non-critical outpatient clinic visits.
This also means that people are deferring their health checks, including screening tests to pick up cancer incidence.
The latter in particular means there will be patients who would otherwise have been identified through routine screening as being in need of urgent medical attention, and these are now missed or delayed — which means the window of opportunity for seeking early or effective treatment may be closed, resulting in morbidity or mortality that could have been avoided.
The situation may be compounded when the supply chains for essential medicines are disrupted, a reality that is starting to happen in several countries which are key producers of medical supplies.
Read the rest of answers here: