And I’m going to express an optimistic view. This world has amazing capabilities of doing amazing science. And if we apply it and work together, I think we can control this problem.
Dr Sedger: Yes, absolutely. I would endorse that. And I’d say that the mortality rates at the moment simply reflect who is being tested. And it’s primarily people who are turning up with symptoms.
But we’re now beginning to appreciate that there is a large number of people who could be quite asymptomatic, who are never tested. This virus will certainly have infected many more people than will be tested.
And if we did have surveillance of every single person being tested, then there’s two questions here: Are you testing for the presence of the virus? If they’ve had virtually no symptoms and not a big illness, you might not find the virus.
But if we test for the presence of an immune response to the virus, we would truly know how many people have been infected. And then we could get a true estimate or at least a much closer estimate of what the mortality rate really is. So at the moment, there’s hyperbole.
Sunanda Creagh: And Catherine asks, what is the likelihood of transmission through using a public swimming pool?
Dr Sedger: I would think quite small because a) the virus would be quite diluted in a swimming pool. Secondly, swimming pools are all treated with chlorine, for example, and chlorine is a very effective anti-viral agent. You’d have to drink a lot of swimming pool water to get the virus.
Professor Wallach: I agree with that.
Sunanda Creagh: Candy would like to know: there are conflicting symptoms lists circulating on Facebook. One says it starts with a dry cough and if your nose is running, it is not COVID-19, which I suspect is incorrect. Can we please have an accurate list?
Professor Wallach: So, again, the major symptoms are, in fact, the cough and shortness of breath and fever. But, it’s not to say it’s not possible that you’ll have also upper respiratory effects.
The virus goes into the lung and attaches to the alveolar cells or to the cells that make up our air sacs and that help our breathing. And it has to get there to really cause this disease.
So if there’s upper respiratory involvement, which includes sneezing and runny nose, et cetera, it’s probably not the main effect of the virus.
Again, I would say if you see that somebody is sneezing and wheezing and and that’s it, it’s probably an allergy, but it does frighten people. I was on the train this morning, and I know if I, God forbid, sneezed the whole train would empty out pretty quickly.
Dr Sedger: You know, we’re just coming into winter. And actually, it’s a really good question because at the moment, what’s building is a sense of fear. But we must keep in perspective that there will also still be the normal seasonal cases of flu.
So just because somebody sneezes or has a sore throat does not mean that they’ve got COVID-19. And we need to make sure, I think it’s really important that we don’t stigmatise people who have symptoms because it may not even be COVID. And we’re all at risk from any respiratory tract infections and already have been for years.
That’s not a new thing. We just need to keep things in perspective.
Sunanda Creagh: A question from Karen: can you catch it twice?
Dr Sedger: Normally, I would have said no, because we imagine that there’s a good immune response that will then provide you protection from re-infection. That’s what our immune system does.
But this is a new virus. We don’t yet fully understand how our immune system clears it. We don’t know whether virus can remain for a longer period of time. I would would say, though, that there are only a few cases of people who have been treated, appear to have recovered, they’ve gone home, they’ve then had another relapse.
There’s only a very few number of cases that have been like that. So for all intents and purposes, I don’t think that’s something we should fear and it’s not something we’ve seen with the previous SARS outbreak in 2003.
Sunanda Creagh: And Tim would like to know: how will quarantine work in a family?
Dr Sedger: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? We think of quarantine as being away from work or away from public places. But really, if you have been infected, then the people in your family are as at risk as your work colleagues would be at work. Again, I think it’s about just common sense. Don’t share food utensils, wash your hands, don’t keep touching your face and your mouth and your nose. Get rid of tissues in a nice sort of clean manner. It’s about minimising transmission.
Professor Wallach: Let me just add to that, that all the data indicates that children likely will only get very mild symptoms, if at all. So if you’re a family member and you’re worried about your children, this is one time that you can be happy about this. All the results so far indicate that children aged zero to nine, there’s not been a single death.
Dr Sedger: Whereas what we do know is the elderly appear to be more susceptible to a more severe disease. So that’s where if I’m sick, it’s better not to go and visit my grandparents or something like that. That’s where quarantine within the family works in a practical sense.
Sunanda Creagh: And just to finish up, is there anything else that you’d like to add?
Dr Sedger: Yeah, I think I’d just want to finish with a really positive note. I mean, we live in an amazing era of medical research and science.
Within a very, very short period of time, parts of the virus had been sequenced. We now track the virus in its entire sequence. We know, we have clinical trials for the drugs. We have people working on vaccines. We have epidemiologists better understanding the disease susceptibility within a population.
I mean, we learn a lot from other existing outbreaks of infectious diseases. And I remain positive that, you know, the medical and scientific community working together will be able to solve this. I’m quite confident that there’s a really strong response.
