Chucky Charlie

I just finished attending a webinar about COVID-19. Webinar involved two prominent figures in fighting COVID-19. A top virologist and a top infectious disease in Malaysia. It was an amazing webinar. However, I can conclude that there were a lot of things that we did not understand concerning this new pandemic. A lot of things that did not go as we predicted. With our common knowledge on SARS and MERS-CoV, we thought that we have enough to prepare, to found out that the virus did not behave as it should. We can't control nature. We can't control how the virus wants to act. What we can do is just damage control. To limit the infection, and to reduce the mortality. However, knowing that there were teams of a distinguished person investigating this virus, give us a bit of reassurance. There is so much that we understand within a short period of time since December. Thanks to those amazing scientists, and also the technology that happens to be evolved enough for us to use. T

Have we ever won a battle between human and microorganism? Since the beginning of time, we were always a colonizer in this planet. Bacteria, virus, and all the simple organism have been living in this world longer than us. As more complex organism developed, the first thing that we do to survive in this world full of microorganism was to prepare ourselves to fight them. Our immune system was created or evolved specifically to fight this indigenous inhabitant of planet earth. If we look back to the previous pandemics, can we count how many time we have won against the pathogen? The pandemic ended, but do we claim the victory? Let us look to the recent MERS-Cov epidemic. It started in the Saudi Arabia in 2012. Since then, 858 deaths has been reported comprising of 35% from 2494 patients infected. Up until today, there are still a few sporadic cases have been reported(or non reported) but they only happen in the middle east. Can we claim victorious from this epidemic? We manage to contr

1. Because there are too many samples to be processed in a day. Not only the new case sample, but the lab also received repeat samples from inpatient and previous negative patients. If there are 1000 negative samples within 2 previous weeks, then there will be 1000 samples already booked to be processed this week. Unless decided that the person does not require repeated samples (asymptomatic, low-risk patients). 2. WHO recommends using 2 gene detection for Covid-19. If other labs use different gene then it will be much difficult. As far as I know, most labs in Malaysia use the same genes / similar genes detection. So this would make things much easier. Back to the 2 genes detection part, if one gene is detected and the other not detected, then how to interpret it? It will require repeat testing in such situation. As COVID-19 is a very new virus, and we understand only that much, it is better to repeat the test rather than make assumptions. Our lab, for example, use E gene detection

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