Hi. I'm dr. Julie Casani and I'm the Director and Medical Director for NC
State Student Health Services. We're here today to talk about a hot topic on
campus, which is coronavirus of 2019. Symptoms of this coronavirus tend to be
respiratory symptoms, so coughing, shortness of breath with fever are the
major symptoms, and it can range anywhere from a mild cold-like symptoms to
something more severe, severe respiratory problems and breathing
difficulties. So right now, the biggest risk is for those people who have
traveled from China. Initially it was from the Hubei province
in China, but it has expanded as the outbreak has expanded throughout China.
So that's the biggest most important risk, either that or you have been in
direct contact with someone who has been diagnosed with the new coronavirus. The
best way to prevent coronavirus if you are in contact with an individual who
has it, is to use respiratory precautions, but also good hand-washing.
The things that we do for all other respiratory infections, like good
hand-washing. Cover your cough and stay home if you're sick. So the first thing
that we're doing and we have been doing since the middle of January is that we
are staying informed. So we are following the CDC website the W.H.O. website and we
have actually put up on the Student Health Service website a coronavirus tag
so that people can go and look at information about what we're doing here
on campus. So right now the risks to campus is very low. We do know that we
have had people who have returned from China who are now on campus and we're
again getting information out to them about what precautions to take, but the
risk is low right now on campus. The bigger risk is with influenza. We have
actually seen quite a few cases of influenza in student health and we hear
reports about students who have influenza who are trying their best to
stay healthy and keep going to classes, so we're recommending again that the
best thing to do is to wash your hands, cover your cough and stay away from
people when you're sick.