COVID-19 has spread to 191 countries and territories and infected over 67.11 million people. The illness has caused more than 1.53 million deaths, and it continues to spread as lockdown measures have been lifted in most countries. On Wednesday, March 11, the World Health Organization held a media briefing to declare the COVID19 outbreak a global pandemic.
Since most COVID-19 infections appear to have mild or moderate symptoms, it is crucial to reduce the number of severely infected cases and deaths rather than only flattening the total epidemic curve. By end of the month, WHO published guidance on the rational use of personal protective equipment, in view of global shortages. This provided recommendations on the type of personal protective equipment to use depending on the setting, personnel, and type of activity. To mark the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases surpassing 100,000 globally, WHO issued a statement calling for action to stop, contain, control, delay and reduce the impact of the virus at every opportunity – by urging global governments into taking immediate and aggressive actions to stop the pandemic and global outbreak of the COVID-19, with aim of saving lives, and minimize impact it has on a global scale that would affect global economies, security, peoples’ livelihoods, health and well-being.
Clusters containment, tracing, recording, and tracing were being implemented across nations to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was found out the massive widespread of infections were through large clusters or through community transmission; WHO initiated the world “detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize” measures to all governments to cope with the pandemic. Nations across the globe have begun to adopt to the new norm of 2020 – observe strict personal hygiene, wearing face masks / covers, using hand-sanitizers, and the most current global routine - the practise of Social Distancing amongst citizens of each nations of the world.
Meanwhile in Taiwan, the number of COVID-19 infections is currently below 400, despite the island's proximity to the outbreak's origin on mainland China. Experts say early intervention has helped stop a public health crisis.
More than two months after a new virulent coronavirus emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan, over 1.4 million people in dozens of countries around the world have been infected.
The COVID-19 infection, however, has largely spared Taiwan, despite the island's relative proximity to the virus's origin. When the outbreak first started in January, some experts predicted that Taiwan would have the highest number of cases outside of mainland China. However, while mainland China has had over 80,000 COVID-19 cases to date, Taiwan has kept its number of confirmed cases below 400. Some international health experts credit this to Taiwan's quick preparation and early intervention.
"Due to the hard lessons that Taiwan learned during the SARS epidemic in 2003, it is more prepared for the coronavirus outbreak than many other countries" said Dr. Chunhuei Chi, a public health professor at the Oregon State University in the US.
Taiwan's government introduced a travel ban on visitors from China, Hong Kong and Macau soon after the number of coronavirus cases began to rise in mainland China. Also, Taiwan had predicted a high demand for masks in late January, thus the Taiwanese government started rationing the existing supply of masks.
If there is a 100sq metre space; divide it by four (based on the one-metre social distancing of one metre to the left, one metre to the right, one metre to the front and one metre to the back which translates to four metres square per person); that location can only have a maximum of 25 people who can enter at any one time as the practise of social distancing is in place. With these fixed calculations, people will feel safer that they will not be fined or compounded when they go out to shop or sit together and have a meal as the shopkeepers can now keep a head count, thus avoid the breaking the enforced SOP ruling.
Recent events prompted teams from Avantas Tech and Maxonrow to conduct research and development to design a holistic application and systems support for major organizations and governments to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The combined efforts of both tech-firms identified the need to disseminate correct, accurate and updated information while having robust security measures to safeguard all vital information and be available to authorities whenever necessary.
MedsLOCK is a communication and real-time monitoring platform built on top of the Maxonrow blockchain. The platform is designed to coalesce all the pertinent aspects of real-time pandemic monitoring such as medical supply chain data, patient metrics, lockdown zone updates, blood donor info, and more into a single interface.
As COVID-19 peaked throughout the world, nations from around the world scramble to find solutions that enable persistent monitoring of the spread of the disease, adequate response time, and monitoring during the recovery phase, as these critical factors would determine how to better contain the virus from spreading all over. The shared and transparent nature of an underlying (and regulated) blockchain like Maxonrow paired with the comprehensive nature of a solution like MedsLOCK can play a significant role in battling COVID-19. Nations worldwide could benefit from MedsLOCK’s application suite to safeguard their information, health risks, and keeping safety at a maximum.
Avantas Tech, together with Maxonrow, saw the holistic approach to co-develop the entire MedsLOCK Native System that could help governments from around the globe to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Government agencies to conduct better crowd control via social distancing, to flatten the pandemic infection curve, enabling its communications teams to raise awareness of misinformation around COVID-19 and to avoid the spread of fake and false news.
Back-office personnel to support front-line forces more effectively as contact tracing can help prevent further transmission of the virus by quickly identifying and informing people who may be infected and contagious, so they can take steps to not infect others.
Revitalizes the economy by means of helping to cope with unplanned downtime risks, providing far effective recovery measures and improving the economy.
Faced with the dire situation of the global COVID19 epidemic's continued spread, as well as the significant challenges posed by this new 'Public Enemy', there has never been a better time to promote international scientific and technological cooperation. The battle against the epidemic has woven a global network of scientific and technological innovation that has brought people from all over the world together. As responsible citizens, we will do everything possible to foster transparent research and technology collaboration. We are also deeply engaged in the global war against the pandemic, so we can combine our energies while adding our experience, skills, and scientific and technological capabilities to combat the pandemic together.
We guarantee to get back to you within a business day.