Iran J Public Health, Vol. 49, Suppl.1, 2020, pp.145-146 Letter to the Editor 145 Available at: http://ijph.tums.ac.ir Public Health Awareness and Knowledge Dissemination Essen- tially Becomes a Need of the Hour in Combating COVID-19 *Sivaraman DHANASEKARAN 1 , Pradeep PUSHPARAJ SELVADOSS 1 , Sundar Manoharan SOLOMON 2 , Ramachandra Bhat CHANDRAMOULISWARAN 3 , Leela KAGITHAKARA VAJRAVELU 4 1. Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Centre for Laboratory Animal Technology and Research, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Jeppiaar Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600119, India 2. School of Technology, Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gandhi Nagar-382 007, Gujarat, India 3. Department of Pharmacology, Government Kilpauk Medical College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600010, India 4. Department of Microbiology, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Center, Tamil Nadu 603211, India 5. Department of Internal Medicine , Sundaram Health Center, Sholinghur, Tamil Nadu 631102, India *Corresponding Author: Email: sivaramand83@gmail.com (Received 01 Mar 2020; accepted 20 Mar 2020) Dear Editor-in-Chief The pandemic spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease-2019) made a pathetic travel between Jan to Feb 2020 at Wu- han City, Hubei Province, China (1). Alarming demographic data’s issued by WHO reveals that nearly 83,652 cases have been reported with co- rona infection globally until 28 February 2020 (2). Among eastern Mediterranean regions Iran sur- prisingly striking highest transmission rate of 245 cases on the invasion of COVID-19. Each infected person can able to transmit the disease to minimum of two others with the pre- dicted reproductive number of 2.2 (3). SARS- CoV-2 as now becomes a major burden on pub- lic health and economic stability of societies around the globe. Hence in the present scenario knowledge, dissemination and public health awareness essentially become a need of the hour in combating the COVID-19. Health care pro- viders are constantly striving towards the evi- dence-based data on newer therapeutic opportu- nities (4), progress on drug discovery (5), clinical trials, source and mode of viral transmission (6), pathogenicity (7) and possible precautionary measure (8) for their clinical interventions. Re- search and publication forum priorities top on the communication sector as it potentially unites the people of different paradigms under one roof. Even China, ministry of science and tech- nology requested researcher to have priority fo- cus on publishing their results for epidemic pre- vention of COVID-19 (9). Droplet infection and surface contamination be- come the primary modes of disease transmission in the severely affected zones. Investigational outcome advocate’s that under favorable condi- tion SARS-CoV-2 virion can able to survive in air atmosphere up to several hours in pathogenic form (10). In this context public health awareness plays a very crucial role in disease prevention and trans- mission some of which include. 1) Safe usage and careful disposal of contaminants: Sufficient knowledge should be imparted to both public and health care professionals on safe usage and , Venugopal VENKATESALU 5