Coronavirus: Colorado Health Officials Separate Fact From Fiction
DENVER (CBS4) - In Colorado, 23 people have tested negative for the novel Coronavirus and nine more tests are pending, officials said Monday. Just last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the spread of the virus is "inevitable" in the U.S., and officials urged people to be prepared.
Many of you still have a lot of questions about the Coronavirus, referred to by health officials as COIVD-19, so CBS4 found experts to give you answers. Answers were provided by Dr. Charles Little, Medical Director of Emergency Preparedness for UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, and Dr. Rachel Herlihy the Communicable Disease Epidemiologist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Q: What is COVID-19?
A: Dr. Little
"COVID-19 is a coronavirus, which is more similar to the common cold virus than a flu virus."
Q: How easily can it spread?
A: Dr. Little
"It does spread fairly easily - usually by cough droplets from sneezing and coughs or by hand contact after someone's touched their mouth."
Q: What measures can you take to prevent the spread of the virus?
A: Dr. Little
"The things to prevent that are good cough etiquette, coughing into your forearm, frequent hand washing, using hand sanitizer, and just not being around people if you're sick."
Q: What are the symptoms?
A: Dr. Little
"The typical symptoms are things like the runny nose, feeling of congestion, a little bit of a sore throat. People may develop a cough. There may be a fever associated with it, and a small subset of people may become more seriously ill, might have shortness of breath, a productive cough, that kind of thing."
Q: If I have any of these symptoms, what do I do?
A: Dr. Little
"Ideally you would self-isolate yourself so you're not spreading it around. Do the normal things with hand washing and things like that. If you start to feel where you are significantly sick, it's most helpful if you can check in with your doctor, discuss things over the phone. Obviously, if you feel you have severe illness, difficulty breathing, those type of things, then you need to seek care."
Q: How is the state handling people who are showing symptoms?
A: Dr. Herlihy
"The symptoms right now are pretty similar to what you might expect for influenza, so it is difficult to know if you might have a different respiratory virus or something like this, but what we do know is risk is based on exposure, and at this point we don't have ongoing transmission in the state. We haven't had a confirmed case here. So really, we're prioritizing testing for people who have a travel history, so have been in parts of the globe where there is ongoing transmission."
Q: What testing capability does the state have?
A: Dr. Herlihy
"As of today, our lab is now able to do that testing here in state, so that means more rapid test results and it also means increased capability here in the state to do more testing."
"Right now our ability is about 160 tests per day with our current resources. If needed, we think we could potentially increase our resources around that."
Q: Who is most at risk?
A: Dr. Little
"Currently it's older people, particularly over 70. People who have preexisting conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, are more at risk. Obviously someone who is on immunosuppressants, such as getting cancer treatment. The good news out of this is it does not seem to particularly affect children, so it looks like children will be kind of spared by this kind of disease."
Q: Do masks help?
A: Dr. Little
"When they've studied population groups just wearing masks around, it doesn't seem to help with preventing the infection spread. Things that have been proven to reduce infection spread are distancing yourself from people who are sick, the hand washing, good cough etiquette, so good public health etiquette more than anything else."
Q: Will we see cases in Colorado?
A: Dr. Little
"We do expect a small fraction of people to get sick from it, but once again, it'll be more like our typical influenza seasons. "
Q: What should everyone know about the coronavirus outbreak?
A: Dr. Little
"I think there's a lot of fear over the coronavirus because it seems very new and it's spreading very quickly. I think it's important to keep it in context. We've just come through flu season, where we've had tens of thousands of deaths of deaths from that. We're not nearly at that level of deaths from the coronavirus, even worldwide, so it's important to keep it in perspective. This is a novel infection and sounds worrisome. The typical public health measures work well for it."
