Healthy practices to maintain during and after this COVID-19 pandemic

By Doreen N. Gonahasa

In December 2020 China started to report cases of severe pneumonia of unknown cause. At the time, nobody thought that Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as it came to be known, would become a pandemic.

As of 5 April 2020, COVID-19 has affected over a million people and killed over 65,000 in 207 countries.  By February 2020, Uganda's Ministry of Health (MoH) had stepped up surveillance by setting up screening at the different border points of entry including Entebbe International Airport.

On 21 March 2020, MoH confirmed the first case of COVID-19 and as of 6 April 2020, we had registered 52 cases with zero deaths. Uganda took various measures under the guidance of MoH and the President, His Excellency Yoweri K. Museveni: On 18^th March, schools and other institutions were closed and on 22 March, Entebbe International Airport was closed. On 30 March, the country was put under lockdown for the following two weeks meaning people were not supposed to leave home except for essential services.

These measures were instituted to intercept the transmission of COVID-19. With these measures in place, Ugandans took up a number of practices that could be very helpful if carried forward even long after the pandemic ends.

Hand Hygiene

For COVID-19, it has been documented that the best way to intercept the virus is proper hand hygiene. This includes washing hands as frequently as possible with soap and water or using an alcohol-based hand rub which many of us know as hand sanitizer.

This has the ability to kill the virus by destroying its outermost lipid layer. Apart from COVID-19, proper hand hygiene is documented to be effective in limiting the spread of other infectious illnesses such as cholera, typhoid, Ebola as well as the common cold. Hand washing is particularly important because hands pick up a lot of germs from surfaces we touch.

Sneezing and coughing etiquette

Over and over again, the President, in his various national addresses on COVID-19 has emphasized the need for proper sneezing and coughing etiquette. This means using tissues or sneezing into one's elbow to intercept the spread of the virus should one be ill. The COVID-19 causing virus is said to be carried in droplets.

This means that when a person coughs or sneezes, droplets carrying the virus can be deposited on any close surface or another person, where they can last for various lengths of time. These can be picked up by another person if not intercepted by proper hand hygiene. Besides COVID-19, other diseases spread in this manner or which are airborne include tuberculosis (TB), the common cold and other influenzas. For a long time, TB patients have been encouraged to observe coughing etiquette and wearing of masks to limit spread. Let us keep this up, nobody wants you sneezing or coughing into their face.  

Jogging

Physical exercise has been documented for years to help in reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases. These include diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and other illnesses particularly related to weight gain. When people were asked to stay home and observe social distance, they took up jogging.

For some reason it seemed like people were given a green light to make use of the now empty streets to jog, even when the sun was sky high and temperatures soring had nothing on them. Though this physical exercise is commendable, to some, jogging has turned into a social event with people jogging in groups.

This undermines the goal of social distancing and presents increased risk of transmitting or getting infected with COVID-19. This prompted the police to issue stern warnings on 5 April. The public was advised to do their exercises at home.  However, this shouldn't stop us from maintaining this good practice.

Even after this outbreak, make time to exercise. While the current number may be attributed to the time availability, freer roads, an alternative to going to the gym, etc, think about it, it is actually possible and cheap to just exercise at home and keep fit and healthy. You can exercise at home by skipping the rope, press ups, sit ups, or utilizing online work out videos. So, go on, make time and exercise some more.

More time with family

Unfortunately, life just does not allow us to do the things we wish we could do; like spending more time with family, taking family vacations, playing with the kids and spending quality time with loved ones.

We must commit time to make ends meet, bills must be paid, food must be found, prices soar each day. We must leave home early to beat the traffic, gets kids to school in time and then to work in time and sit through traffic again at the end of the day to get back home. In the end the exhaustion means just getting to bed only to get up early again. Unpractical as it may seem, how about we try make some little more time to enjoy family time, do some work at home if you can (or not? sometimes carrying work home is a bad idea).

Reading

To make use of all the time away from work, some people have taken up more reading. A close friend called me to tell me he was pulling out all the books he had put away and intended to read at least one a week. Many other people have done likewise. This evening I noticed two of my neighbours seated at their verandas reading and I thought ‘nice…!'. Reading is beneficial because apart from being informative, it widens one's imagination ability, and improves vocabulary. While there has been a shift from reading hard copies to e-reading, it's all reading, so go on, read some more!

Working at home vs. office

For most workplaces, employees are more comfortable knowing you are working when they see you at your work station, and for some you have to clock in and out, (never mind some people sit there and surf the net, play games, read papers and sip on some tea waiting for end of work to clock out).

Employers often forget that reporting to work does not necessarily translate into output. Personally, this has always bothered me. During this period, people have been able to prove that work can go on and deliverables made without getting into office, except for some service delivery work. Think of how much time we would save with the crazy traffic one has to get through to and from work! How about we allow for some flexibility to work at home. 

Online education

With schools including universities closed for up to 32 days moreover in the middle of the term, many parents and their school-going children pondered how they would keep up with school work. While some schools managed to send children home with work to keep them occupied, the majority, especially the rural public schools were not able to do likewise.

On 4 April 2020, the Minister of Education and Sports announced some measures to reach out including providing reading materials in the hope that schools will reopen soon.

Other stakeholders such as television stations (NBS) promised to give some airtime for school programming on a show called ‘home school learning, while others such as UNICEF provided free online scholarly materials.

While in many developed countries online education is widely embraced, this has only picked up a bit here in Uganda. This is something we could carry forth because of the various benefits it carries including the ability to research more online, saving on transport costs to schools and embracing technology.  

So, when we finally get past this pandemic, we would all have a healthier life if we maintain these practices. Stay Safe!

The writer is a Field Epidemiology Fellow at the Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program, Ministry of Health