Coughing up the Facts about the CORONAVIRUS pandemic

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For mil­lions of peo­ple across the world, the COVID-19 virus feels like the start of a hor­ror movie – and the effects are becom­ing huge, with quar­an­tine zones spread­ing by the day. The coro­n­avirus, also called by this name, is lit­er­al­ly burn­ing its way across the four cor­ners of the globe. It is top­pling stock mar­kets and plac­ing heavy tax­es on gov­ern­ments, infra­struc­ture, and clos­er to home, our fam­i­lies. Peo­ple from all walks of life, from the rich­est to the poor­est, are start­ing to get the jit­ters. No amount of mon­ey can fix this. Some gov­ern­ments, even, think of the coro­n­avirus as a polit­i­cal tool, mis­man­ag­ing its respons­es for their agen­das, not so much con­cerned with the actu­al glob­al viral out­break. No one knows how this is going to turn out. Sure, the mor­tal­i­ty rate for those who are under 70 isn’t that high, but the nov­el­ty of this dis­ease is show­ing itself to be ter­ri­fy­ing because it is reshap­ing lives. Meet­ings all over the world have been can­celled; the air­line indus­try is fore­cast to lose 30$ bil­lion because of can­celled flights.

Check out these latest quick facts which are literally changing daily:

• Italy clos­es all shops except phar­ma­cies and food stores in a tough lock­down as death tolls con­tin­ue to rise. Con­te said the impact of the tight­ened restric­tions from today, 12^th March, on the rate of new cas­es would take at least 2 weeks for the effects to be seen. The coun­try as closed muse­ums, gyms, night­clubs, and all oth­er venues in the coun­try. Italy has over 12,000 con­firmed coro­n­avirus cas­es and a death toll of 827 already. Near­ly 900 peo­ple are in inten­sive care in Italy with the virus. Iran, which is anoth­er virus hotspot, and Italy, they are real­ly suf­fer­ing.

 

• Don­ald Trump sus­pends all trav­el between Europe and the US for 30 days, that’s start­ing 12^th March 2020, mid­night. These restric­tions don’t apply to US cit­i­zens or green card hold­ers or fam­i­ly mem­bers of US cit­i­zens, but for­eign nation­als. Trump is also can­celling any upcom­ing trips to Col­orado, Neva­da, and Wis­con­sin because of ongo­ing con­cern over the pan­dem­ic.

 

• The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) has called this out­break a pan­dem­ic. WHO chief, Dr. Tedros says that out­side-Chi­na cas­es have increased 13-fold in just 2 weeks. WHO defines a pan­dem­ic as the spread of a dis­ease world­wide, for which most peo­ple don’t have any immu­ni­ty.

What exactly is this coronavirus?

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The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) says it is part of a large fam­i­ly of virus­es that cause ill­ness. These can range from the com­mon cold to more severe dis­eases. Did you know that the word ‘coro­na’ means ‘halo’ or ‘crown’?, a Latin word refer­ring to the shape of the virus par­ti­cle when it is viewed under the micro­scope. Coro­n­avirus­es are known to be zoonot­ic, which means they are trans­mit­ted between peo­ple and ani­mals.

Signs of infection

• Fever
• Cough
• Res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms
• Short­ness of breath
• Breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties
• Some­times, in the more severe case, the infec­tion can turn into pneu­mo­nia, kid­ney fail­ure, or severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome (SARS).

To date, more than 3,800 peo­ple across the world have died from coro­n­avirus, with over 110,000 infec­tions already record­ed.

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Where did this COVID-19 virus, as it is referred to, originate?

• The “nov­el coro­n­avirus” called COVID-19, named by WHO, orig­i­nat­ed in Wuhan, Chi­na. It is so named to enable dis­cus­sions around the dis­ease and its pre­ven­tion, spread, trans­mis­sion, sever­i­ty, and treat­ment. It is the ICTV – the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee on Tax­on­o­my of Virus­es, which gives virus­es their names.  There might be con­fu­sion between the major virus out­break in 2003, which was called SARS-CoV and the coro­n­avirus, which is called SARS CoV‑2. WHO says that the rea­son we are not call­ing the coro­n­avirus by its SARS CoV‑2 name is that “from a risk com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­spec­tive, using the name SARS can have unin­tend­ed con­se­quences in terms of cre­at­ing unnec­es­sary fear for some pop­u­la­tions, espe­cial­ly in Asia which was worst affect­ed by the SARS out­break in 2003”. For that rea­son, it says, the coro­n­avirus is care­ful­ly referred to as “the virus respon­si­ble for COVID-19”. These terms aren’t meant to replace the offi­cial SARS CoV‑2 name, though.

 

• So recent­ly, Decem­ber 2019, there was an out­break of this coro­n­avirus in Chi­na, orig­i­nat­ing from a seafood and meat mar­ket in Wuhan, Chi­na. Now it has spread to oth­er coun­tries, and that includes the USA with cas­es being con­firmed in Wash­ing­ton State, Ore­gon, New York, and Cal­i­for­nia with deaths report­ed in Wash­ing­ton State and Cal­i­for­nia.

 

• How­ev­er, researchers in Guangzhou, Chi­na, in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2020, were already sug­gest­ing that pan­golins might have been the source of the dis­ease. That was based on genet­ic com­par­isons of the virus found in humans and ant-eat­ing ani­mals – this, accord­ing to Nature.com. But oth­er research pub­lished in The Lancet sug­gests that the virus might instead have orig­i­nat­ed some­where else, before being brought to the mar­ket. One infec­tion-dis­ease spe­cial­ist from George­town Uni­ver­si­ty, Daniel Lucey, told Sci­ence mag­a­zine that 13 out of the orig­i­nal 41 cas­es didn’t have links with the mar­ket – he said it was pos­si­ble that the first cas­es may have spread from some unde­tect­ed source already in Novem­ber 2019.

 

• Humans first get the coro­n­avirus from con­tact with ani­mals. From there, it sim­ply spreads from human to human, and today, health offi­cials don’t know what ani­mal caused this COVID-19. It will spread, though, through con­tact with cer­tain bod­i­ly flu­ids, such as when you cough or touch an infect­ed per­son. If you go on to touch your eyes, your mouth, or your nose, you could become infect­ed.

Can it be diagnosed and how?

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Symp­toms can appear in as few as just 2 days, but also as long as 14 days after being exposed. Chi­nese researchers indi­cate that SARS-CoV­‑2 could be infec­tious dur­ing its incu­ba­tion peri­od as well. Should you think you have the coro­n­avirus, you need to con­tact your doc­tor imme­di­ate­ly. Before head­ing over to the doc­tor, call them first to let them know of your con­cerns. Then they will know to gath­er the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion and offer you guid­ance on your next course of action. Your doc­tor may run tests so he can rule out com­mon infec­tions. If he sus­pects it could be the coro­n­avirus, he might sug­gest you self-iso­late so as not to spread the infec­tion.

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Can coronavirus be prevented or avoided?

• Try not to come into con­tact with peo­ple who are sick or meet­ing in large groups and if you are ill, stay at home.

 

• If you have a cough, cough into a tis­sue or your elbow or your upper sleeve – don’t cough into your hands.

 

• Wash your hands often with soap and water, par­tic­u­lar­ly after going to the bath­room, before you eat, after blow­ing your nose, sneez­ing, or cough­ing. You can also use an alco­hol-based hand san­i­tiz­er with 60% alco­hol in as well If soap and water are not avail­able.

 

• Avoid touch­ing your mouth, eyes, or nose.

 

• If you are trav­el­ling to an area where there is COVID-19 present, speak with your doc­tor.

Is there any treatment?

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At this moment in time, there is still no vac­cine or treat­ment for this virus. For­tu­nate­ly, though, symp­toms start going away on their own. If your symp­toms feel worse than say, for instance, the com­mon cold, then con­tact your doc­tor. He or she might pre­scribe you some fever or pain med­ica­tion. In the same way that you would drink plen­ty of flu­ids and get plen­ty of rest if you were diag­nosed with flu, the same applied to the coro­n­avirus. How­ev­er, if you have trou­ble with your breath­ing, don’t hes­i­tate to get med­ical care imme­di­ate­ly. If you have been diag­nosed with COVID-19, you should wear a face­mask to pre­vent you from spread­ing the virus to oth­ers. The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) doesn’t rec­om­mend peo­ple wear masks if they don’t have COVID-19. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, with the out­break coin­cid­ing in many coun­tries dur­ing the cold and flu sea­son, it is more than like­ly that patients might present them­selves in phar­ma­cies with plen­ty of queries about the virus. The phar­ma­cist might want to elic­it your trav­el his­to­ry, which will be an essen­tial part of help­ing to iden­ti­fy your risk of SARS-CoV­‑2.  Nat­u­ral­ly, patients with under­ly­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions will be con­cerned and have ques­tions. Those with cold and flu symp­toms, but who have not trav­elled to an affect­ed area, should be man­aged as usu­al.

The biggest threat

As the COVID-19 spreads around the world, cer­tain­ly, fear will also con­tin­ue to rise with the knowl­edge that this virus may not let up for many more months. And with con­firmed cas­es get­ting high­er by the day, with thou­sands of oth­er poten­tial cas­es still uncon­firmed, the world is start­ing to get real­ly jit­tery. From what first was accept­ed with a mild indif­fer­ence, the coro­n­avirus is now hold­ing the world in its death­ly clutch­es and caus­ing real pan­ic and fear. Dr. Tedros from WHO is call­ing on all gov­ern­ments to change their course of the out­break by tak­ing “urgent and aggres­sive action.” Start at home with your kids and your fam­i­ly by being pre­pared – we can fight this! “A virus has three pur­pos­es: to dupli­cate, to infil­trate, and to spread from one host to the next. Ulti­mate­ly, even a sin­gle virus can shut down an entire sys­tem” — Wayne Dyer.

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Your best defence

If you want to be immuno­log­i­cal­ly fit, you will need to be phys­i­cal­ly fit. Exer­cise mobi­lizes the white blood cells by increas­ing blood flow to seek and destroy bac­te­ria and virus­es in parts of the body. Adults need to do at least 150 min­utes a week of mod­er­ate aer­o­bic exer­cis­es such as gar­den­ing, hik­ing, or cycling – or 75 min­utes of vig­or­ous activ­i­ty such as swim­ming, run­ning, or fast aer­o­bic class­es. Old­er peo­ple who are more vul­ner­a­ble to infec­tion are advised to do what­ev­er exer­cise they can find because it slows your immune sys­tem from declin­ing with age. Healthy eat­ing to keep your body strong and to build the immune sys­tem is also advised.