I'd like to start with where did COVID-19 come from? I think by now we all
realize that the illnesses were first identified in Wuhan China, however now
that is a global pandemic is present in at least a hundred and sixty countries
territories or areas. The exact source of the virus has not been confirmed. We do
know that corona viruses infect animals and those can become able to infect
people potential source is a wet market in China where live animals were sold
for food. The symptoms of COVID-19 are primarily people will exhibit a fever a
cough which is dry and shortness of breath. primarily people will have a
fever of 100.4, a dry cough, shortness of breath, and some are also
reporting fatigue. Using the pattern from another coronavirus MERS-CoV, also called
Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, experts believe the symptoms will appear
2 to 14 days after exposure. some people have one of these symptoms some have
multiple and some people who have tested positive for COVID-19 report no symptoms.
it's also important to understand that these symptoms can also be present with
other illnesses such as influenza ,common cold, and seasonal allergies. it's
believed that the incubation period for COVID-19 is between 2 and 14 days. so how
did we get here? how did this happen so quickly with breathtaking speed? the
virus has shown that its growth is exponential not linear.
with linear growth the numbers per day would be about the same, for instance 500
new infections per day. after 11 days there'd be about 5,500 people infected.
with exponential growth the base number doubles with every time span. For example
with exponential growth 500 infections grow to more than 1 million after 11
doubling periods. After ten more doubling periods they would
reach a billion. this is in no way a prediction for the number of deaths that
we should expect or illnesses it's a reminder that exponential growth leads
to a very large number very quickly even when starting from a low base. so what is
our doubling time? well epidemiologists suggest the doubling time for COVID-19
is likely around 6 days however in the absence of testing it's difficult to
know exactly what the doubling time frame is without a vaccine or effective
antiviral medications other strategies must be used to slow down the spread of
the virus. these include self isolation, social
distancing, and in some cases what they're now calling shelter-in-place.
when you hear the term flattening the curve they're talking about pushing down
the number of new infections each day in an effort to avoid overwhelming our
systems which we've seen in Italy can happen very rapidly ,especially our
healthcare systems. they may have trouble accessing resources to treat extremely
large numbers of patients all at the same time social distancing is meant to
contain the growth to allow hospitals and health care centers to continue to
be able to treat everyone who needs care. what about the United States? well as of
this week there are confirmed cases in every state in the U.S., currently
certain locations report a higher case load and more community transmissions
than others we hear a lot about California New York and some other
locations that are experiencing high community transmissions
but the experts tell us that we're still in the early phases of this pandemic in
the US and it's not too late to make measures to slow the transmissions and
this is whether or not you're in a hot spot today because as we can as we've
seen in the recent weeks this changes on a daily basis. to
understand infection prevention and infection control we always have to
first understand how diseases are transmitted and it's different for
different types of diseases. obviously in health care we're very familiar with
blood-borne diseases and blood-borne disease
mission but I believe we're less familiar with diseases that are
transmitted through droplet or airborne mechanisms. so the primary way that COVID-19
is transmitted is through close contact, that's within six feet of a
person that who's infected and is coughing or sneezing or otherwise
releasing droplets from their respiratory tract. there's no
documentation of spread via contaminated surfaces. it's important to know that we
don't know a lot about this disease yet it is too early but there was an article
that was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine that the
virus is believed to survive up to two to three days on certain surfaces like
plastics and stainless steel and, up to three hours in aerosols. it is really
important to note that this was a carefully controlled lab setting not
necessarily duplicating what would happen in a clinical setting
in addition viral survivability does not necessarily indicate viral infectivity.
there needs to be adequate number of pathogens in order for disease
transmission to occur.