Lessons From COVID-19 Conferring Environmental Re-Engineering Opportunity

Introduction

Referring to the global coronavirus report released on 20 January 2022, 332,617,707 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including approximately five million counts of deaths, are reported (World Health Organization (WHO), 2022). Climatic changes affect many of the environmental determinants of health, death, and infection. This phenomenon is likely to arise when environmental changes such as water pollution, global warming, air pollution, extreme heat, and natural disasters cause approximately 250,000 deaths per year (Word Vision, 2021). COVID-19 epidemic is still ongoing from the first reported outbreak in 2019 to the world experiencing more than two waves of infections and death cases leading to a health crisis that needed an emergency response and action plan. COVID-19 has been a global pandemic that has created medical emergencies worldwide. When the pandemic overwhelmed the existing health facilities, COVID-19 became a disaster because of its high spread and mortality rate. Covid-19 Pandemic threw into question our level of preparedness when it comes to first aid response that would facilitate holistic recovery and well-being from patients to healthcare workers.

The screening was determined as the most appropriate method to establish the accurate trend and number of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases across countries. However, screening was limited due to the unavailability of requisite testing tools, including swabs for sample collection and laboratory reagents for actual testing of samples. The unavailability of equipment is attributed to the high global demand against a low supply chain that could not match up to the urgent demand in affected countries. Besides, the cost and performance of available diagnostic services are insufficient and inadequate There is a need for rapid testing, tracing possible contacts, and improvement of preparedness for pandemics (Zhu & Wong, 2020).

Dealing with global pandemic on top of the present climate-related crises is a challenge because climate change is known to have created conditions that favor the spread of numerous communicable diseases, including tuberculosis and malaria, which are still a part of eradication target the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. Globally, COVID-19 restrictions have threatened the ease of vaccines transportation, medical aid supplies, food supply, and rescue mission to vulnerable populations. In order to maintain hope for life on earth, dismantling toxic systems and climate change need to be treated as an emergency to prevent another infectious pandemic from happening.

Human survival is under threat from global infections, particularly those transmitted from animals to humans as pathogens causing epidemics and pandemics over the years. Contagious zoonoses are particularly dreadful to the public health system. The ravaging viral COVID-19 pandemic is primarily attributed to wild bats. Its impact has been felt across various economic sectors resulting in job losses that have largely destabilized the globe. Other reported issues associated with COVID-19 among the masses include anxiety in response to economic stress, panic due to future uncertainty, and depression, among other psychosocial challenges (Khanna et al., 2020). It is important to note there are other threats to global health security, which are closely related to other dimensions of human activities, such as food production, environmental conservation, biodiversity, water and sanitation, trade, education, technology innovation, and economic growth. All these dimensions are dependent on each other to promote good health embedded in livelihood and human dignity for a healthy population. Pandemics are unpredictable and events likely to trigger such pandemics cannot be easily foreseen. Hence, strategizing how we can prevent such occurrence is key from the lessons we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to apply a multifaceted approach. A zoonotic disease is a contagious animal disease that can be transmitted to and infect humans. Most of the transmission occurs due to consumption of wild meat and interaction with the infected animals. The unintended transmission happens with increased human to animal contact when people practice encroaching activities in wild habitats that interfere with the nature paradigms.