The coronavirus outbreak is serious but isn’t a cause for panic, a panel of researchers and experts at Colorado State University agreed Wednesday.
CSU hosted a panel discussion Wednesday afternoon to discuss the coronavirus, formally named COVID-19, with the public. CSU students and staff, including president Joyce McConnell, attended the talk along with Fort Collins community members.
The outbreak is a new strain of the coronavirus, a type of virus that also includes SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The outbreak began in Wuhan, China in December.
The disease is believed to have been transmitted from animals to humans in animal markets in China, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Like MERS and SARS, it originated from bats.
The virus can be transmitted from person-to-person, with The United States reporting the first confirmed case of the virus spreading person-to-person on Jan. 30, according to the CDC.
Globally, there have been 75,204 confirmed cases of the virus as of Feb. 19, according to the World Health Organization. More than 74,000 of the cases are in China. There have been 2,006 confirmed deaths in China and three in other countries. The outbreak was declared a public health emergency by the WHO on Jan. 30.
There have been no reported cases of the coronavirus in Colorado, according to reporting from the Denver Post. There have been no deaths from the coronavirus reported in the U.S.
Four CSU professors participated in the panel and Mark Zabel, research associate dean in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, served as moderator. The professors each spoke briefly about their areas of expertise related to the virus and then answered audience questions.
Tony Schountz, associate professor of microbiology, immunology and pathology, said that he began to study bat-borne viruses after the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003. Bats have a unique biology that make them more prone to carrying viruses, but researchers are still trying to figure out why, he said.
Lorann Stallones, a psychology professor who specializes in epidemiology and public health, encouraged the audience to seek out reliable sources for information regarding the outbreak. She recommended the World Health Organization’s website, which has been publishing daily reports about the virus.
The reassuring thing about COVID-19 is that it has a lower fatality rate than SARS and MERS, she said. In China it has a 2.3% fatality rate, and outside China the fatality rate so far has been under 1%, she said. However, she thinks that the control measures that are being put into place, which include strict quarantines for people flying back into the U.S. from Wuhan, are appropriate to limit the spread of the disease.
In response to an audience question about whether the level of concern the disease has prompted is warranted, all of the panelists agreed that it was, but that people should not panic.
“I’m more worried about influenza than about this virus,” Schountz said. Three children have died of influenza in Colorado this flu season so far.
However, Schountz noted that researchers know how the flu will behave and that it has a vaccine, which mitigates its risks. For COVID-19, neither are true. He is skeptical that a vaccine will be developed before the outbreak has run its course, noting that MERS still does not have an effective vaccine.
The most effective thing that people can do to protect themselves from germs is still to wash their hands with soap and water, panelists said.
At the end of the panel, Candace Mathisason, director of CSU’s Infectious Disease Research and Response Network, thanked the audience members for their participation. The network has created a new study group specifically for COVID-19, she said, and the university will continue to monitor the outbreak.
More information from CSU regarding the outbreak can be found at safety.colostate.edu/coronavirus.
