{"id":15614,"date":"2020-03-24T01:11:56","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T01:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/ner\/?p=15614"},"modified":"2020-03-24T11:40:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T11:40:54","slug":"just-the-facts-mam-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_7\/2020\/03\/24\/just-the-facts-mam-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Just the Facts: COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country.” Dr. Nancy Messonnier stated at a news conference about COVID-19 given on Tuesday 2\/25\/2020. Dr. Messonnier is the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.<\/p>\n

For this month\u2019s blog post I had hoped to write about nutrition since March is \u201cnutrition awareness\u201d month. However, with so much public angst and non-stop media coverage being given to COVID-19, organizations like NLM take their mission of improving public health by making trustworthy health information available to everyone, very seriously. Therefore, it is important to us here in the NER to provide the best information we have for, up-to-date health information, based on facts, about the recent coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s blog post will answer a few of the COVID-19 questions we have heard from our network.<\/p>\n

What is coronavirus and COVID-19?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coronavirus is a novel virus named for the crownlike spikes that protrude from its surface. The coronavirus can infect both animals and people and can cause a range of respiratory illnesses from the common cold to more dangerous conditions like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS. COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus. This new virus and disease were unknown before the recent outbreak that started in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.<\/p>\n

How many people and what countries have been affected by this virus?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The World Health Organization has developed an interactive world map they are continuously updating with data identifying countries with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and number of deaths caused by it.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/experience.arcgis.com\/experience\/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd<\/a><\/p>\n

Is COVID-19 more contagious than the flu?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Epidemiologists explain how contagious a disease is with reproductive numbers. The reproductive number represents the average number of people that one infected person will infect.\u00a0This number can be reduced by altering transmission dynamics\u2014with social distancing, home isolation, quarantine, and use of personal protective equipment in health care settings. Over time as people are infected and recover\u2014or if a vaccine becomes available (which may take months or years)\u2014immunity in the population also reduces the effective reproductive number of a disease.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.globalhealthnow.org\/2020-02\/coronavirus-expert-reality-check#osterholm-2<\/a><\/p>\n

To control an outbreak, the goal is to reduce a disease\u2019s reproductive number to less than 1. If the reproductive number remains 1 or higher, the outbreak will continue. In the case of COVID-19, the\u00a0estimated reproductive number is around 2.6<\/a>, meaning the outbreak is expected to continue.<\/p>\n

COVID-19 is contagious because it travels through the air, when a sick person, breaths, talks, coughs or sneezes. The virus spreads through the expelled droplets that fall to the ground or on other surfaces. Coronavirus can only travel about 6-feet, we don\u2019t know how long the virus can live on surfaces. It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads. It also might be possible to spread COVID-19 before showing symptoms, but this is not considered the main way the virus spreads. People are thought to be most contagious when they are the sickest.<\/p>\n

Seasonal flu is a less contagious virus than COVID-19. \u00a0The spread of flu can be slowed by access to vaccines as well as immunity from past epidemics. On average, people infected with the flu tend to infect 1.3 other people.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/coronavirus\/2019-ncov\/about\/transmission.html<\/a><\/p>\n

What are the symptoms of COVID-19 and are the symptoms similar to the flu? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, cough and shortness of breath. These symptoms have ranged from mild to severe and may appear 2-14 days after exposure the virus. The complete clinical picture with regard to COVID-19 is not fully understood. Reported illnesses have ranged from mild to severe, including illness resulting in death. While information so far suggests that most COVID-19 illness is mild,\u00a0a report<\/a>\u00a0out of China suggests serious illness occurs in 16% of cases. Older people and people with certain underlying health conditions like heart disease, lung disease and diabetes, for example, seem to be at greater risk of serious illness.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/coronavirus\/2019-ncov\/summary.html#risk-assessment<\/a><\/p>\n

What are the symptoms of flu?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flu signs and symptoms usually come on suddenly. People who are sick with flu often feel some or all of these symptoms:<\/p>\n