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What is coronavirus? Breaking down an outbreak

Health officials say they're ready to respond if the coronavirus outbreak reaches the Quad Cities.

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Health officials say they're ready to respond if the coronavirus outbreak reaches the Quad Cities. Right now, the risk is low in Iowa and Illinois, but researchers in Iowa City say more needs to be done to understand how threatening the virus really is.

"There's a lot of reasons to worry about this," Dr. Stanley Perlman, University of Iowa professor of microbiology and immunology said. 

Dr. Perlman has been studying strains of coronaviruses for the last 38 years.

Dr. Perlman says the virus is in the same category as the common cold, but is more dangerous because it can cause a severe respiratory infection.

"We care about it now, because this particular coronavirus, even though it is in the same category of viruses as the common cold, actually causes a severe respiratory infection.”

Dr. Perlman says the mortality rate for the coronavirus is about 3%, or 1 and 30. He says elderly and those with weakened immune systems are more at risk of more complications. 

I  think you and I have equal risk of getting it, but because i'm older than you, I would have more risk of not doing well with the infection."

He says some symptoms are asymptomatic and appear like the common cold. The virus can be compared to the flu. He said they have not seen any deaths with children or babies, but they do not know why the virus isn't impacting the young. 

"There's lots of things we don't know," Dr. Perlman said. "We don't know how the virus works very well. It's brand new. We know a lot from other corona viruses, but the proteins in this virus are very different."

Dr. Perlman said our bodies respond differently to this virus than the flu because our bodies to have fighting antibodies for coronavirus, like bodies do for the flu. He says there is only one strain of this virus. 

"Once you get it and you have any kind of reasonable immune response, you shouldn't get it again," Dr. Perlman said. 

He says the it's origin is still unknown, but he  believes it came from southeast Chinese bats.

"The notion that this was either made by the Chinese or released by the Chinese, none of that is true," Perlman said. "The odds that you have to worry about this being human manipulated are very close to zero."

He says it's hard to say how serious a problem this virus will become, because more research on it's spread and prevention still needs to be done.

Genesis Hospitals in the Quad Cities say they have tests for the coronavirus. They would send the sample to the state health department for testing.

  

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