So COVID-19 is a disease that's caused by a new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and it is
the talking point of the world never mind the United Kingdom. The reason
it's the talking point is because this is a severe respiratory infection.
This is a virus that infects humans at a very high level and in terms of how
transmissible it is. What we see is an elevated temperature, a fever
that's very quickly followed by a persistent cough, and then a very small
percentage of the population that will then progress to severe infection which
is bilateral pneumonia where both lungs that are unaffected by the virus, and then
that has led to the large number of deaths that we've seen reported in the news.
Why this virus is so serious is because it's new, it's new in the human
population. This is a virus that has been circulating in some wild animal
reservoir most likely bats and some other mammals, and it's jumped to species
barrier into humans. This isn't the first time this has happened it
happened with the SARS outbreak in 2003, it's the reason behind the 2009
influenza pandemic, and also things like Ebola. The reason I'm talking about this,
my name is Professor Alan McNally, I'm the Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection
here in the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at University of Birmingham.
My current research interests are antimicrobial resistance, but for a long time
I worked on influenza and I worked in the government's
avian influenza lab and I actually worked on an influenza during the 2009 pandemic as well.
There's lots of research going on into the virus at the moment and it's
absolutely essential research, there are multiple things that we don't know that
we need to know, we need to know things like what's the infectious dose of the virus?
There's lots of research going on at the moment to try and determine how
long the virus, for example, will persist on surfaces, we need to
know why children don't show symptoms. We need to know why only certain members of
the population such as the elderly and immunocompromised seem to be more
susceptible to infection so there are lots of unknowns it's very important
that we have the time to do this research and with the funding to do this research
while the outbreak is going on, it's absolutely crucial.
There are lots of urban myths going around at the moment about how to treat coronavirus,
how to keep yourself safe, one of those is actually about drinking tea because
there's been some suggestion that the virus can't survive above 26 degrees
centigrade. That survival data is based on the virus sitting and droplets on a
surface outside a human host. Once the virus is inside a host it doesn't sit
outside cells. It will very quickly attach to your cells and go inside them
so drinking tea is not going to make a huge amount of difference. Having said that
there has some evidence from China that during the highest wave of the
epidemic in China, health care workers were drinking large amounts of fluid and
this was making a difference to the symptoms that we believe that's because
when the virus progresses from the throat to the lungs, there's a sort of
mid phase where it infects the nose and and the kidneys or parts of
the upper respiratory tract, and there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest
that if we drink lots at that stage, we wash the virus into our stomach where it
dies rather than into lungs where it can replicate, but drinking tea isn't
going to really protect you from coronavirus.
The best ways to protect yourself are exactly as Public Health England
have said, it's hand-washing, really good hand washing technique,
hand washing in hot, soapy water for 20 seconds or more.
This is not a typical airborne virus like influenza, it doesn't
survive in the air for a long time it's being spread by droplets. How you'll
acquire those droplets is by standing two meters or closer to an infected
individual when they cough or speak or touching surfaces where droplets
have landed on and then touching your face, or your tongue on your lips or whatever.
So the obvious way to protect yourself is excellent hand washing technique.
Personally, I've been washing my hands anytime that I go out into a public space
and touch something, I'll go and wash my hands, and I have been wearing
gloves on the train and I get away with that because it's cold at the moment,
I suppose that might look at that odd come summer, but the hand washing technique is
everything. There's a lot of and there's a lot of conflicting information on
wearing masks and so on Public Health England's
current advice is that that's not recommended, the reason it's not
recommended is because many people really don't know how to wear masks
properly, and they may encourage more face touching which will actually
enhance your chances of being infected.