While you do your best to preempt the spread of Covid, prepare for the worst by ensuring you have adequate Health Insurance Cover
Image Credit : Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Reports of the first COVID-19 cases emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in the Hubei province of China. Subsequently, since the beginning of 2020, the world has been grappling with the rapid spread of this new strain of coronavirus, which is also called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). By mid-March, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, globally, as of 21 May 2020, there have been 49,04,413 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 323,412 deaths. In India, as of 21 May 2020, there have been 1,12,359 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 3,435 deaths. While the race for a vaccine is on, there are genuine concerns amongst the international medical fraternity that it may not be able to extinguish the threat of this disease permanently, at least in the near future. This is due to fears that the virus is mutating to produce different strains around the globe, making it a challenge to discover a single vaccine that can provide complete immunity to all citizens of the world. A sudden spike in cases reported in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and other countries have also endorsed the possibility of a second wave of contagion. As the disease gets more complex, so does finding vaccines and cures. Some scientists and healthcare experts conclude that the base-line solution to this crisis would be the development of herd immunity, which implies that the pandemic may be here to stay for a while. While there is currently no certain cure or vaccine for the disease, doctors are administering symptomatic treatment to those that are infected and suffering from it. Fortunately, supportive care for patients could be effective. However, this entails considerable costs, which vary from patient to patient, based on the symptoms, extent of progression of the disease, presence of other ailments, age, etc. While the Indian government is offering free of cost treatment to those affected, public facilities are overburdened with cases. The the rapid spread of the disease has left the world with little or no time to create adequate amenities for containment and care of the afflicted.