After seventy days of lockdown, Unlock 1.0 has been put into action from 1st June 2020. The economy and life in general for most is gradually returning to normal in a controlled and phased manner. However, it is going to be a long haul. Experts and officials are suggesting that ‘we must learn to live with the virus’. With vaccine still months away, we need to live in this new normal. Speaking  to India Science Wire, Prof. K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, gave five tips for ‘living with the virus’.

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“Either we must change the virus, or we must change ourselves; changing the virus is going to take time,” says Prof. Vijay Raghavan. Research and development of drugs and vaccine are underway, but for them to be available for broader use, after proper clinical trials, is going to take time. Producing the drugs and vaccine for everyone is also time-consuming. Meanwhile, we can change ourselves to face the pandemic.

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Here are the five tips from Prof. Raghavan:

1] Wear a mask when you step out of the houses: Recent studies have found that when a person speaks, about 1000 tiny droplets of saliva comes out. If that person happens to be infected with novel Coronavirus, then each of these droplets will carry thousands of germs. Large droplets will fall off the ground, usually within one-metre distance. However, the plum of tiny droplets can float in the air for a longer time, mainly if the area is not well ventilated. So, wearing a mask will keep you safe from the Coronavirus infection.

2] Practice vigilant hand hygiene: An analysis of 75,465 COVID-19 cases in China by a WHO-led study shows that novel Coronavirus is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes. When we wash our hands thoroughly with soap for at least thirty seconds, the virus, if any, on our hands is destroyed. “There are suggestions that the virus may also be transmitted by faecal and oral routes. Hence it is better to wash the hands and legs,” says Prof. Raghavan.

3] Maintain social distance: Most likely, the infection happens through direct contact or inhaling the droplets shed by an infected person. Droplets in usual conditions travel about a metre from the infected person.  Keeping a distance of one metre from one another in markets, offices, and public transport would greatly help.

4] Test and tracking: “If someone turns out to be COVID-19 positive, then one has to go back in time and identify proximal contacts of that person and identify them. We must test them,” says Prof. Raghavan. Only an infected person can transmit the virus to others or contaminate a surface and spread the virus. If most of the infected persons are identified, then controlling the transmission of the virus becomes easy.

5] Isolation: “The people who have been identified as positive cases should be isolated,” says Prof. Raghavan. Once isolated, the infected person can receive proper medical attention. Further, as they remain isolated, an infected person cannot spread the virus to others. The tentacles of the infection can be cut.