With over 3 million infected cases, Coronavirus is a global threat spreading like a wildfire and taken the world by storm. The pandemic has changed our life’s too, shut-downs, stringent social distancing measures, self-isolation, facemasks, and work from home becoming the new normal. The impact of these lifestyle changes bought by the deadly virus will be felt for years to come.
Globally, COVID-19 has crashed economies, challenged healthcare systems, and disrupted everyday living in a way no one imagined before. The effects of this change are catastrophic exposing senior citizens, cancer patients, renal dialysis, obesity, asthmatics, heart patients, choric liver patients, diabetics, hypertension patients to a high-risk cohort.
The Coronavirus pandemic had made us fear to shake hands, and feel safe in social distancing, and along with it comes the fear whether can Coronavirus attack twice with the realization that health and living are of utmost importance.
COVID-19 Lifestyle Changes
The Coronavirus calamity which originated in China’s Wuhan in the second half of 2019 has become a health emergency. To mitigate the risks, most countries of the world, have imposed a lockdown and imposed stringent social distancing measures.
The lockdown measures, have brought social distancing, work from home, telemedicine consultation, face-marks being forced on us by Coronavirus. Many of us have adjusted and got used to these radical lifestyle changes.
Social Distancing Measures
The most important lifestyle change bought by COVID-19 is social distancing. Restricting the contact between people assists in control strategies to mitigate the pandemic spread. Isolation and contact tracing are a common control strategy adopted for infectious disease outbreaks. Social distancing measures are an effective measure to trace an individual’s contacts and get them isolated.
Contact tracing is the most effective way to trace a high percentage of contacts who have come in contact with a COVID-19 infected person. The fewer contacts a person has, it is easier to trace and contain the risk. These are the following social distancing measures which can help you to stay safe and healthy-
- Restrict going out till it is necessary like buying groceries, responding to medical care, or caring about the aged and high-risk patients.
- Work from home, switching to online classes for the kids.
- Connecting to loved ones on video calls instead of in-personal visits.
- Cancelling in-person meetings and switching to web-based meetings instead.
- An absolute no to public transportation, like trains, flights, buses, or taxies.
Social distancing, self-quarantine, and isolation measures are highly effective slowing the rate of infection to a considerable extent.
Work from Home
The Coronavirus pandemic has led to the world’s largest work from the home situation even witnessed in human history. In the times to come, remote work is here to stay as employees across the world have adjusted to this new form of lifestyle.
Whether you are new to work from home or have experienced this form of working before, consider a comfortable home office setup which can help you maintain a quiet and productive work atmosphere. Make sure you are taking breaks in between work, setting up boundaries, and maintaining strict working timings.
Adoption of Digital Health Tools
Telemedicine technology has emerged as a strong defense against the COVID-19 pandemic. With a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases around the globe, people who stay at home following emergency lockdown protocols increasingly feel the need to switch to technology for a digital physician consultation. Adopting telemedicine is a safe way for medical professionals and physicians who can reduce their exposure risk of contraction and de-congest the pressure on the existing medical infrastructure.
Face Masks are the New Normal
Effective at capturing droplets, Facemasks are effective at mitigating the primary transmission route of Coronavirus. Studies point out facemasks provide roughly fivefold protection versus no protection when it is not worn. COVID-19 prevention facemasks are categorized into three types:
- Homemade cloth face mask
- Surgical mask
- N95 respirator
Face mask cuts the risk of the virus transmission, besides protecting others. Thus, face masks are crucial for everyone especially those belonging to emergency care services, high-risk cohort patients, family members of care-takers who care for someone who is ill.
Focus on Immunity
Immunity or a body’s self-defense capability to fight off external invaders like bacteria or virus acts as a shield preventing harmful pathogens which attack an individual. Consider the following steps, to keep your immune system functioning optimally-
- Balanced Meals: A Heathy diet with a healthy mix of proteins, vitamins, and minerals strengthens your immunity and aids in weight loss. To control the risk of infection, consider freshly cooked safe meals and restrict your sugar intake.
- Adequate Sleep: An 8 hour of sleep is very important to rejuvenate. Sleep eases the mental stress of self-isolation not just for you but for your children as well.
- Stress management: Stress adds to degrading your immunity levels. Keep stress at bay while you work from home, practice mediation yoga to fight off stress.
- Meditation and Exercise: Make Exercise, Yoga and Meditation as a routine. Exercises build you stronger while yoga lets our mind calm down easing stress management.
- Handwashing: When you handwash for at least 20 seconds with soap or using hand sanitizer containing more than 60% alcohol you are just not mitigating the COVID-19 scare but destroying the survival of Coronavirus on surfaces. Don’t forget to wash your hands as directed by healthcare professionals.
Digital Consultation on Gigadocs
Unlock the power of Telemedicine by reaching out to a digital doctor specializing in infectious disease on the Gigadocs app. Adopting to the recent lifestyle changes and adhering to social distancing, book an infectious disease specialist or dietitians around you, on the Gigadocs app,
Gigadocs assures you never miss a follow–up an appointment, by sending you your next appointment details over notification. Gigadocs lets you consult your doctor on an intelligent practice management software and securely store your medical records, track your vitals like steps walked, pulse rate, and share them with your digital doctor on the Gigadocs platform on a real-time basis.
To download Gigadocs app-
IOS App – apple.co/2W2iG4V
Andriod App – bit.ly/33AQoRC
To know more e-mail, at info@gigadocs.com
Reach out to your digital doctor and consult your Coronavirus queries with trained health care professionals on the Gigadocs app.
