From the economy to healthcare, COVID-19 has significantly affected almost every sector and changed many procedures. Coronaviruses are not new in the medical realm, but COVID-19 is a novel type of coronaviruses. It is thought to have originated from China. As with other pandemics, healthcare workers are at the frontline of fighting the virus. Seeing as the virus is highly contagious and can overload a country’s health care system within weeks, COVID-19 has led to several changes in procedures and protocols in the healthcare setting. In some countries, nurses have faced the ethical dilemmas of deciding who to treat and who to leave out. COVID-19 has considerably affected professional nursing practice, and some of the effects are likely to persist in the long term.
One of the clinical areas that COVID-19 has changed is patient and nurse safety protocols. Safety measures such as regular hand sanitization, fumigation of hospitals, wearing of masks by both the nurses and the patient, and social distancing have become mainstream. Also, to minimize contact with patients, more and more nurses are opting to use telehealth services. The America Nursing Association (ANA) recommends the use of telehealth to ensure health services are not stopped while protecting patients and physicians (ANA Enterprise, 2020) . Telehealth services minimize contact since they are delivered over communication systems. The height ened occupational risks due to COVID-19 have also put some long-standing nursing ethical declarations to the test. While “the nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient,” according to the Code of Ethics for Nurses, the pandemic has shown the need for nurses to temper their commitment to the patient with taking care of themselves (ANA, 2020) . If other players have not played their part in availing the necessary protective equipment, nurses are forced to make “unethical” decisions. This shows the need to build an ‘ethical’ healthcare system, rather than leaving nurses and physicians to bear the entire moral responsibility burden. Finally, the pandemic has shown the need to offer mental health support for nurses.
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Seeing as COVID-19 is a novel virus, there are many unanswered questions regarding its origin transmission, diagnosis, cure, medications, and other elements on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2020) website. Research into the novel coronavirus is still scarce, and preliminary studies have had inconclusive results. Up to now, the virus has disproportionately affected adults, with children mostly exhibiting mild symptoms. This has begged the questions whether children could be carriers of the virus and whether the preventive measure being exercised by adults need to be extended to children. These answers are not yet available on the CDC website. Noting that several countries have recorded fatalities among children, the WHO advises that it is crucial to protect children like any other vulnerable populations.
The trend exhibited by COVID -19 among children is consistent with other human coronaviruses. Before COVID-19, SARS-CoV was considered the most aggressive human coronavirus ( Principi, Bosis, & Esposito, 2010 ). Like COVID-19, SARS-CoV symptoms were much less severe in children than in adults and often disappeared after a few days. COVID-19 may be following the trend of other human coronaviruses; it poses more significant risks to adults than children. However, that does not mean that children should not be protected.
The CDC website has substantial information on COVID-19, but some fundamental questions regarding the virus remain unanswered. The real origin of the virus is not extensively covered in the website. Understanding the origin of COVID-19 will be essential to the prevention of similar infections in future. Though some sources point to Wuhan as the single source of the virus, it is crucial to understand whether there were other source pockets of the infection. Finally, given that the severity and transmission of other human viruses such as influenza decrease with temperature and humidity, The CDC website need to be updated with information and projections on how the upcoming summer season will affect the spread of COVID-19.
References
ANA Enterprise. (2020). COVID-19 Resource Center. Retrieved May 3, 2020, from Nursing World: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/work-environment/health-safety/disaster-preparedness/coronavirus/faqs/#ethical
ANA. (2020). Code of Ethics for Nurses With Interpretive Statements. Retrieved May 3, 2020, from Nursing World: https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/code-of-ethics-for-nurses/coe-view-only/
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2020). Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) . Retrieved from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html .
Principi, N., Bosis, S., & Esposito, S. (2010). Effects of coronavirus infections in children. Emerging infectious diseases , 16 (2), 183.
