- As we've mentioned, all of the precautions taken so far,
however drastic, are meant to prevent people
from being exposed to the coronavirus.
Germs can rapidly spread, especially in indoor environments,
as we learned from Charles Gerba,
an environmental microbiologist
with the University of Arizona.
Keep this simple for me.
What is the coronavirus?
- Actually, there are coronaviruses that occur every year.
They're part of the common cold viruses.
They cause about five to 7% of the common colds
every year in the United States but nobody dies from it.
- What makes this strand so different than previous years?
- Well, I think this current coronavirus
is a much higher rate of mortality.
Usually with the common cold coronavirus,
we have no recorded mortality.
It's not as bad as the SARS agent that occurred in 2003
where mortality rate was 10% among the general population.
This new coronavirus is about three to 4% mortality
so it's less but it's spreading much faster.
The SARS agent that occurred in 2003 didn't survive well
in the environment, thank goodness,
so it wasn't as easily transmitted as this new coronavirus.
- Some of the practices that many of us are undertaking,
reduced work hours, working from home,
no more handshaking, no more gatherings of 10 or more,
how effective are those measures?
- Well, eliminating exposure is one of the keys
to preventing the movement of this virus
from one person to another.
For example, let me give the idea.
We've done studies where we put a tracer virus
on a push plate to an office building
of say, a hundred people.
Within four hours, it's on 50% of the peoples' hands,
and half the surfaces in that facility.
It's quite interesting that the coffee break room
seems to be the area where people not only exchange germs
but also gossip at the same time
because that seems to be the first area contaminated
so separating people at work, not going to work,
is a really good idea 'cause we've seen the viruses spread
very rapidly in an office environment today.
We're working on continuously acting disinfectants
which we would put on a surface
but anytime the virus lands on it,
they would start killing it right away
and that's one of the new weapons we feel in germ warfare
that would be very useful so we're rapidly working right now
on all kinds of new technologies that could be used
to coating surfaces to reduce the spread of viruses
like the new coronavirus.
That's one of the things we're really emphasizing here.
- How quickly can you take what you're doing in here
and apply it out there?
- Well, we're hoping the technology's available out there,
we're just trying to see, make sure it works
and it works directly to reduce the spread of the viruses
but still it's gonna be months
before it's gonna be available.
- One of the nicknames you have is Dr. Germs
so how disgusting are things like this phone?
- Yeah, I get that nickname because we study how germs move
in the environment, where's the most contaminated surfaces,
and phones are one of the worst
that most people thought dirty without realizing it
all the time because they're continually putting bacteria
and potentially viruses on the phone surfaces.
Studies in hospitals have shown that phones can play a role
that transmit certain diseases in hospital
and healthcare situations so we know they're involved.
But what you're doing all the time
without realizing you're touching a surface,
then touching your phone so you're moving a micro-organism
from the surface to your phone.
Now you put your phone in your pocket then you go home
and then you touch the phone again,
you take the micro-organisms off
then you can bring 'em to your face,
your other surfaces in your home environment.
- A lot of uncertainty, what can we do to protect ourselves
and minimize some of the risk we're passing
along to each other?
- Well, what we've seen in our studies,
hand sanitizers used routinely, disinfecting wipes,
and social distancing seem to work the best.
In more recent work, in looking at how viruses move
in the home, we found that actually bar soap
in cloth towels you dry your hands with,
face towels, basically, can also serve ways
of spreading micro-organisms in the home.
That's one reason you don't see bar soaps
in public facilities 'cause they can get contaminated
and one person can pick up a virus to another.
We've collected several hundred towels from homes
and actually, within a few days you get fecal bacteria.
They're usually growing in it because they stay wet,
they stay moist, you don't get all the bacteria
on your hands when you wash your hands
and they contaminate towels.
So what you should do is you separate towels
for individuals in the homes and change 'em
every two to three days and you use liquid soap if you can.
- We don't always get sick so over time,
do our bodies just adjust to some of these?
- Well, you don't get always sick
but you're gambling with germs all the time.
You have the right hygiene habits washing your hands
on a frequent basis particularly you're out in public
and that staying home when you're ill is a thing
so you're a running a germ gauntlet all the time.
And the idea with using hand sanitizers
or disinfecting wipes, washing your hands
is to keep the odds in your favor and not the germs' favor.
- Now you've been at the U of A for nearly 40 years,
you were here for SARS, H1N1, now you're here for corona,
are we learning something from all these illnesses?
- Yeah, I think eventually, we're learning something.
Micro-organisms don't give up.
I mean, basically we're their food supply
and they can evolve very rapidly.
So this is kind of what's been expected.
Also, the human population is growing to much larger numbers
so they're more likely for organisms to adapt
and spread very rapidly through large populations
like we're seeing so this won't be
the last virus that we see
and hopefully we'll be better prepared in the future.
- Okay, Dr. Gerba, thank you. - Thank you.