CNN readers from all over the world have asked more than 90,000 questions about coronavirus.
Here are answers to some of the most popular questions:
Q: What is so different about coronavirus that we have to shut down business? Why practice keeping social distance now, when we didn’t do it during SARS and the swine flu epidemic?
A: Unlike SARS and swine flu, this novel coronavirus is very contagious and very deadly, said CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
SARS was also a coronavirus, and it was a new virus at the time, “Gupta said. “In the end, we know that SARS eventually infected 8,000 people worldwide and caused around 800 deaths. The death rate is very high, but apparently not contagious. “
Swine flu, or H1N1, “is very contagious and infects about 60 million people in the United States alone in a year,” Gupta said. “But it’s far more deadly than the flu even – like 1/3 deadly like the flu.”
What makes the novel coronavirus different is that “this is very contagious … and seems to be far more deadly than the flu too,” Gupta said. “So those two things, in combination I think, are the reasons why we take this very seriously.”
Q: Can coronavirus be transferred by people’s shoes? How do you protect children who are crawling or playing on the floor?
A: Yes, coronaviruses can live in shoe soles, but the risk of getting Covid-19 from shoes appears to be low.
A report published by the CDC highlighting a study from a hospital in Wuhan, China, where this coronavirus outbreak began.
The soles of medical workers’ shoes were smeared and analyzed, and research found that the virus was “widely distributed” on the floor, computer mice, trash cans and door knobs. But it is important to note that research is carried out in hospitals, where the virus is concentrated.
It is still possible to take a coronavirus at the bottom of your shoes by running errands, but there is no way you will get sick of it because people don’t often touch the soles of their shoes and then their faces. Because Covid-19 is a respiratory disease, that is CDC recommends wearing a mask when in public places and wash your hands often– the correct way.
If you have small children who crawl or touch the floor regularly, you should take off your shoes as soon as you get home to prevent the spread of corona viruses or bacteria on the floor.
Q: Can you catch coronavirus more than once? Or does someone become immune or have long-term immunity against the virus?
A: It’s too early to know for sure. But other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold, might give us a clue.
With “the common cold coronavirus, you actually don’t have long-lasting immunity, so we don’t know the answer to this particular coronavirus,” Dr. Celine Gounder, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the New York School of Medicine.
“That would actually be one of the challenges with designing a vaccine is how you actually cause immunity to last long enough to protect you.”
