Hyderabad: India, as a country, experiences different weather conditions, so, does it anyways affect the spread of the pandemic, Dr A U Shankar Prasad, General Physician, Sunshine Hospital, Hyderabad says, “I am a proponent that the environment plays an important role in the intensity of infection. I believe that India is not having high mortality only because of the weather conditions”.
He adds, “Due to the change in weather, either the strength of the virus will increase or the people will become more vulnerable than they are now. One of the two things may happen”, and therefore, in such a condition, people should take extra care and precautions even if the lockdown gets over.
He suggests some measures that should be strictly practised:
- Try to cut down social contact and maintain a physical distance between you and the other person
- Maintaining immunity will still be an important factor. Thus, the consumption of citrus fruits and other immunity-boosting foods and other techniques must be followed.
- Cut down on things that tend to affect your immunity
- Eating and sleeping on time is essential. Have a moderate lifestyle and not going to extremes in anything
- Eat according to the season. Have only hot food and drinks during the rainy season, as cold ones can be very dangerous and may promote infection
- At the community level, people should ensure that infected people don’t get into the closed environment. Proper measures should be taken and thermal scanners can be used at such places.
- People suffering from cold and cough should not be allowed in such closed spaces like malls, theatres, etc, to help avoid the community spread.
Therefore, along with suggesting all these measures, Dr Prasad stresses on the idea of ‘Coexisting’. He says, “As long as we don’t respect nature and stop destroying land, forests, water and animals, such things are going to happen.
The Amazon fire, Australian forest fire, the drastic climatic changes are not a coincidence. It is nature retorting to the damage we have done to it. All the industries exploiting nature like aviation, manufacturing industries, the automobile sector, and others should take responsibility.
Thus, it is our responsibility to learn to live without destroying nature and practice the philosophy of coexistence with nature, animals and other human beings.
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