Down a dirt path outside of the village of Meliandou in Guinea once stood a tall, hollow tree where children used to play. They used to catch bats in its hollow trunk.
The village was strategically located because an urban point linking 3 countries ie Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia was nearby and had an access to airport and international travellers.
A two year old who used to enter the hollow of the tree contracted a fever and died. Soon the disease ripped through West Africa and more than 10000 ultimately died from this unusual disease.
In anger, the natives burnt the tree down. That day the sky rained bats. When Dr Leendertz’s international team arrived in Guinea and collected soil samples from below the tree’s charred trunk, the researchers recovered DNA that belonged to a particular bat species which is now linked to the Ebola disease.
But by then Ebola a new Zoonoses has spread beyond Africa. People of rest of the world had no IMMUNITY neither any drug.
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Till date we are yet to develop an effective drug or vaccine against Ebola. Yet we could successfully contain Ebola. How ?
By Mathematics.
A mathematic formula predicted that if we can isolate 70% of the Ebola patients, the disease will fail to spread. Till then, Ebola was a local African responsibility. Patients affected in Congo would be lying by the roadside awaiting their fate and spread the virus on.
Now US epidemiologist arrived and built huge hospital facilities in Congo where the infected pesons would be admitted and effectively isolated even though no treatment was available.
Once the isolation reached 70%, the epidemic died down. The world sighed a relief.
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When no drugs or vaccine are available for a disease, Quarantine is the only way to stop the epidemic.
That is how China could control the huge Covid-19. Case finding, Contact tracing and isolation.
( Just when the cynic western media cried about this lockdown behind the great Wall, China suddenly broke free from the grip of this Corona Virus.)
“It’s all about speed”: the most important lesson from China’s Covid-19 response for the rest of the world.
In China, they have set up giant network of fever hospitals where positive cases are immediately isolated till they are sputum negative.
No wonder, today China’s new cases stats fall to a single digit figure: only 8 new per day.
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 