I’m sure everyone is engulfed in the news about the coronavirus (COVID-19). So much of it is on television, radio, in newspapers and all media avenues. It is terrifying how this virus started and spread worldwide so fast! I don’t think there is a country on this planet where this illness hasn’t occurred in. Stay aware, stay home and stay far apart from other people. Six feet apart. Wash your hands frequently. In some cases you will have to wear a mask and surgical gloves. These are the methods that will slow the spread. This illness is very serious!
If you have contracted the virus please understand that incubation (before symptoms begin) is approximately five days! New research shows that even people who have mild cases of COVID-19 who have the virus need to stay home up to eight days after symptoms are gone! This virus still remains eight days after the symptoms subside! Lokesh Sharma an instructor at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut said “More severe infections may have even longer shedding times.”
Dr. Lixin Xie, of Chinese PLA General Hospital in Beijing advised “if you had mild respiratory symptoms from COVID-19 can spread even after symptoms disappear, so patients who have recovered need to be treated as if they are still infected. And retested.
Up to 25% of people infected may never have symptoms. And in others, their symptoms may not show up until 48 hours after being infected, according to new evidence. Yet researchers have said people in both groups may be “silent spreaders” of the virus.
Xie said more research is needed to learn whether the virus is capable of transmission in the later stages of COVID-19 infection.
The study that Dr. Xie and instructor Lokesh Sharma participated in was published online March 23 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
“People think, “If I don’t feel bad, I don’t have it and can’t give it to anyone, and that is now misguided thinking,” said Chad Petit, PhD, and assistant professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, who studies viruses.
COVID-19 is a respiratory infection, which is closely related to SARS and MERS, and had been spreading across China. It then spread around the world rapidly.
After a person is exposed, “the virus is propagating in your body, but your immune system has not recognized that something is going on systemically, “says Chad Petit, PhD. “That’s why you don’t get a fever right away. Just because you don’t have symptoms doesn’t mean you don’t have the virus.”
Researchers in Singapore say the spread of the virus before there are symptoms might happen through generations of respiratory droplets or possible through indirect transmission. Speech and other vocal activities such as singing have been shown to generate air particles, with the rate of emission corresponding to voice loudness. They cite the report about singers in Washington state attending choir practice, with 40 of 60 later testing positive for the virus.
“Basically, the infection is transmitted from the silent spreaders the same ways obviously sick people do”. If someone sneezes or coughs and wipe their nose, and those droplets get on you or your hands and you touch your face, that is thought to be the most common route of transmission at the moment,” Petit said. He also said that although the virus shed on surfaces can also be infectious. Be aware that people with mild symptoms may pass this off as a cold or allergies. Get checked.
The virus that causes coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days on surfaces were droplets from someone who has sneezed or coughed. This is according to a new study from National Institutes of Health, CD, UCLA and Princeton University scientists in The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome (coronavirus 2, SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in droplets for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days, on plastic and stainless steel. The results provide key information about the stability of SARS-Co-2, which causes COVID-19 disease, and suggests that people may acquire the virus through the air and after touching contaminated objects. the study information was widely shared during the past two weeks, after the researchers placed the content on a preprint server to quickly share their data with colleagues.
The NIH scientists, from the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Montana at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, compared how the environment affects SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-Co-1, which causes SARS, SARS-CoV-1, like its successor now circulating across the globe, emerged from China and infected more than 8,000 people in 2002 and 2003. SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated by intensive contact tracing and case isolation measures and no cases have been detected since 2004. SARS-CoV-1 is the human coronavirus most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. In the stability study the two viruses behaved similarly, which unfortunately fails to explain why COVID-19 has become a much larger outbreak.
ABC NEWS.go.com has reported that as far back as November, 2019, intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’ Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting. Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November Intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents. This was also reported on CNN.com.
