TABLE 1.

Summary of general features of Poliomyelitis and COVID‐19

Features	Poliomyelitis	COVID‐19
Mode of transmission	Faecal‐oral (most common) and less commonly by respiratory droplets	Person to person through respiratory droplets, airborne
Incubation period	3–6 days for onset of infection and 7–21 days for developments of paralysis	Somewhere between 2 and 14 days after exposure
Clinical presentation	Mostly asymptomatic, some may have non‐specific symptoms like fever, sore‐throat, malaise	Typically presents with shortness of breath, cough, fatigue, fever; sometimes asymptomatic
Risk groups	Children <5 years, unvaccinated individuals, immunocompromised patients, pregnant women	Older people, immunocompromised individuals, patients with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer
Diagnosis	Culture via throat secretions, stool specimen, CSF	RT‐PCR
Treatment	Portable ventilators	Antiviral or retroviral medications
	Nutritious diet	Mechanical ventilation
	Bed rest	Steroids
	Pain relievers	Blood plasma transfusions, etc.
	Moderate exercise (physical therapy), etc.
Prevention	Inactivated (killed) polio vaccine (IPV), live attenuated (weakened) oral polio vaccine (OPV)	Nucleic acid vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech COVID‐19 vaccines), viral vector vaccines (Oxford/AstraZeneca, Janssen, CanSino)