Corona Virus and Covid -19: What you should know?
What is a Corona Virus?
Coronaviruses are common type of viruses that cause an infection in the nose, sinuses, or upper throat. Most coronaviruses are not dangerous.
Corona-viruses cause most of the common colds that affect us throughout the year, but they are not a serious threat to healthy people.
What is COVID-19?
Corona Virus Infectious Disease 2019(COVID-19) is an infectious /communicable disease leading to sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) caused by SARS-CoV-2 which is a corona virus .
SARS-CoV-2 is one of the seven types of coronaviruses, including those that cause serious illnesses such as Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
SARS-CoV-2 affects the upper respiratory passage like sinuses, nose and throat or the lower respiratory passage like trachea and lungs.
It spreads in the same way as other coronaviruses, mainly through person-to-person contact. Infections range from mild to severe.
After an outbreak in December 2019 in China, In early 2020, the World Health Organization identified SARS-CoV-2 as a new type of coronavirus. The outbreak spread rapidly throughout the world.
Is there more than one strain of SARS-CoV-2?
Coronaviruses cells have all their genetic material in something called RNA. When viruses infect you, they attach to your cells, get inside them, and make copies of their RNA, which helps them spread. If there’s a copying mistake, the RNA gets changed. Scientists call those changes mutations.
These changes happen randomly and by accident. It’s a normal part of what happens to viruses as they multiply and spread.
A Chinese study of 103 cases of COVID-19 suggests the mutation in the virus. They found two strains, which they named L and S. Those two types are very similar, with slight differences in two places. Type S is older, but type L was more common in the early stages of the outbreak. They think that one may cause more cases of the disease than the other, but they are still working on the process.
How long will the coronavirus pandemic last?
It is too early to say how long the pandemic will continue. It depends on many things, including the researchers’ work to learn more about the virus, their search for a treatment and a vaccine, and the public’s efforts to delay the spread.
The best way to stop spread is social distancing, hand hygiene and wearing a mask .