Kerala & Mizoram; High COVID-19 case load but low mortality: Role of precautionary principles.

A small state in Northeast, Mizoram, with credentials in education sector similar to Kerala, like Kerala is attracting attention for the wrong reason; the high COVID-19 case load. So, what may be driving the high case load in these high literacy level states. Is the low mortality level (due to COVID-19) leading to a lack of emphasizing caution to prevent infection transmission behind this surge?

The Return Back to Typical Practice from the "Battle Plan" of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic: A Comparative Study.

BACKGROUND: Every aspect of the medical field has been heavily affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and neurosurgical services are no exception. Several departments have reported their experiences and protocols to provide insights for others impacted. The goals of this study are to report the load and variety of neurosurgical cases and clinic visits after discontinuing the COVID-19 Battle Plan at an academic tertiary care referral center to provide insights for other departments going through the same transition. METHODS: The clinical data of all patients who underwent a neurosurgical intervention between May 4, 2020, and June 4, 2020 were obtained from a prospectively maintained database. Data of the control group were retrospectively collected from the medical records to compare the types of surgeries/interventions and clinic visits performed by the same neurosurgical service before the COVID-19 pandemic started. RESULTS: One hundred sixty-one patients underwent neurosurgical interventions, and seven-hundred one patients were seen in clinic appointments, in the 4-week period following easing back from our COVID-19 "Battle Plan." Discontinuing the "Battle Plan" resulted in increases in case load to above-average practice after a week but a continued decrease in clinic appointments throughout the 4 weeks compared with average practice. CONCLUSIONS: As policy-shaping crises like pandemics abate, easing back to "typical" practice can be completed effectively by appropriately allocating resources. This can be accomplished by anticipating increases in neurosurgical volume, specifically in the functional/epilepsy and brain tumor subspecialties, as well as continued decreases in neurosurgical clinic volume, specifically in elective spine.

When COVID-19 will decline in India? Prediction by combination of recovery and case load rate.

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. There is sudden need of statistical modeling due to onset of COVID-19 pandemic across the world. But health planning and policy requirements need the estimates of disease problem from clinical data. OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to predict the declination of COVID-19 using recovery rate and case load rate on basis of available data from India. METHODS: The reported COVID-19 cases in the country were obtained from website (https://datahub.io/core/covid-19#resource-covid-19_zip/). The confirmed cases, recovered cases and deaths were used for estimating recovery rate, case load rate and death rate till June 04, 2020. RESULTS: A total of 216919 confirmed cases were reported nationwide in India on June 04, 2020. It is found that the recovery rate increased to 47.99% and case load rate decreased to 49.21%. Death rate is found to be very low 2.80%. Accordingly, coincidence of the difference of case load rate and recovery rate (delta) will reveal a declination in expected COVID-19 cases. CONCLUSION: The epidemic in the country was mainly caused by the movement of people from various foreign countries to India. Lockdown as restricting the migration of population and decision taken by the government to quarantine the population may greatly reduce the risk of continued spread of the epidemic in India. This study predicts that when the case load rate gets lesser than recovery rate, there after COVID-19 patients would be started to decline.