10-12-2021, 11:49 AM
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Prevention of Covid-19 is a serious business. Arguably all our efforts today are directed towards performing different levels of prevention to stop the spread of this disease. But many fail to realise that prevention itself has many complex layers that we as individuals are often engaged in, but simply not aware of.
When we talk about prevention, most of us are commonly referring to primary prevention – what you do to prevent a condition or disease from ever afflicting you, such as by taking regular exercise to prevent a heart attack, or diabetes.
In the Covid-19 context, this refers to social distancing, masking and other measures including vaccination which aims to prevent individuals from ever getting infected.
Secondary prevention, on the other hand, is about getting individuals to detect their disease or condition in early stages, so that they can subsequently do something to prevent it from getting worse.
An example of this would be how we go for cancer screening to detect cancer early so that it can be treated. For Covid-19, a form of secondary prevention is to have a nose or throat swab and subsequently assessing it via RTK antigen or PCR tests for detection of disease.
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