The COVID-19 Pandemic and the New Normal: Do Key Areas Need New Preparedness?

COVID-19 Pandemic and the new normal

Abstract

Health system needs preparedness and strenghtening as a routine part of being sustainable promising effective outcomes. However COVID 19 Pandemic comes as a gamechanger when the entire world worked from computers and online mode became the new normal. However as bedside and field are textbooks of medicine and public health a hybrid model came up based on evidence generated globally in face of the pandemic. Resilience of old-fashioned health systems collapsed under the tremendous pressure of this contagion and gave way to this new normal of physical distancing, social isolation and universal sanitization. No other time in recent history had seen such a convergence of public health and critical care medicine. Health systems underwent sea changes in terms of new infrastructure being built due to COVID-19 (COVID-19 ward, COVID-19 screening clinic, COVID-19 vaccination centre, isolation ward, quarantine centre, etc.), in terms of human resources (COVID-19 warriors/survivors) and newer policies and guidelines (testing protocols, travel protocols, report generation systems, etc.). However, a big jolt to the medical research field was that of an avalanche of publications including several pre-prints on a daily basis.Every known conceivable therapy was added to the guidelines on and off based upon updates. This article attempts to highlight in the aforesaid perspective some operationally feasible yet small managerial modifications in the blueprint of the system could be incorporated for blended health care behaviour which will aid in tiding over the crisis, if not now, but also in the near future