20 Contagious Facts About The COVID-19 Pandemic of 2019

One study found that placing Wuhan under complete lockdown delayed the spread of coronavirus by nearly 80%.

To prevent Coronavirus infection, CDC recommends that people wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the toilet or when hands are visibly dirty; before eating; and after blowing one's nose, coughing, or sneezing. It further recommended using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol by volume when soap and water are not readily available.

Washing your hands with good old soap and water is a good way to avoid any kind of viral infection because just any kind of soap (even the cheapest ones) absolutely annihilates viruses. It has to do with how the soap molecules interact with the virus. Soap is made up of two-sided molecules. One side is attracted to water; the other side is attracted to fat. And viruses are made up of material surrounded by a coating of proteins and fat. When viruses interact with soap, that fat coating gets ripped out by the soap molecules. So soap literally demolishes viruses.

There are no specific antiviral medications approved for COVID-19, but development efforts are underway, including testing of existing medications (as of March 22, 2020). Attempts to relieve the symptoms may include taking regular (over-the-counter) cold medications, drinking fluids, and resting. Depending on the severity, oxygen therapy, intravenous fluids and breathing support on a ventilator may be required. The use of steroids may worsen outcomes.

To estimate how easily a virus spreads, scientists calculate its “basic reproduction number,” or R0 (pronounced R-nought). R0 predicts the number of people who can catch a given bug from a single infected person. The current coronavirus virus is estimated to be at about 2.2 (as of March 22, 2020), meaning a single infected person will infect about 2.2 others, on average. By comparison, the common flu has an R0 of 1.3. So it is more contagious than the common season flu.

Standard surgical masks cannot protect you from Covid-19, as they are not designed to block out viral particles and do not lay flush to the face. However, surgical masks can help prevent infected people from spreading the virus further by blocking any respiratory droplets that could be expelled from their mouths. N95 respirators have been shown to greatly reduce the spread of the virus; however, proper training is required to correctly fit the N95 respirators around a person’s nose, cheeks and chins to ensure that no air can sneak around the edges of the mask.

The development of infection from coronavirus can lead to severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis, septic shock, and death. Patients who reported no pre-existing medical conditions had a case fatality rate of less than 1%. Therefore 99% of the patients who died after contracting coronavirus had pre-existing illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, hypertension, cancer, etc.

In Italy, the median age of the infected by COVID-19 is 63 but most of those who died are older.

On March 22, 2020, reported cases of COVID-19 passed 300,000. It took three months to reach the first 100,000 cases, only 12 days more to reach 200,000 cases and 4 more days to reach the 300,000 mark.

South Korea confirmed its first case of COVID-19 in the country on January 20, 2020. In the four weeks following the incident, South Korea managed to avoid a major outbreak with only 30 people contracting the virus. This changed with the emergence of “Patient 31.” It’s not clear where Patient 31 became infected with the virus, but in the days before her diagnosis, she traveled to crowded spots and since then she has been linked to 80% of the Korean Covid-19 cases. As of March 22, 2020, South Korea reported nearly 9000 cases.