| BHPian
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| Re: The Coronavirus Thread
Bring yourself up-to-date on the latest research with this interview with Professor Woo-Joo Kim from Korea University Guro Hospital. Super straightforward answers like his previous interview. I've also pasted the transcript of the interview posted by a viewer. Quote: Transcript:
Any updates or new information about Covid-19?
- During incubation period before any symptoms start showing up, you start being infectious 2 days before you get a fever or other symptoms
- Before, some suspected that people were infectious throughout the whole incubation period while others argued that they weren't infectious at all during that period
Dr Fauci seems quite confident you cannot get reinfected once you get the virus, is that true?
- In Korea, they have experienced cases where people get reinfected and would develop a fever or have cold-like symptoms for 5 or 10 days after getting discharged.
- Therefore, patients are testing positive, then negative, then positive again. Two reasons for this:
1. Relapse - when virus gets treated, symptoms go away, and the patient even test negative. But it comes back again.
i. This happens because the number of virus copies in the system becomes so small that it can't be detected. Usually you need 3000 copies of virus in order to detect. That means the virus was never completely gone.
2. Reinfection - when you completely get rid of the virus but you get infected by someone else again.
- Dr. Fauci referring to reinfection, but not referring to relapse.
If your body develops antibodies shouldn't it not relapse?
- It is still not clear, but there are studies that show that after you get infected with Covid-19, your body normally starts producing antibodies by end of first week
- In a recent test on monkeys, researchers infected monkeys with Covid-19
○ One of the monkeys produced antibodies in its blood and the blood was confirmed to be the antibodies which neutralize the virus
- When they injected the monkey with the same virus, it didn't get reinfected and no symptoms came up.
- Therefore, we can draw conclusion antibodies prevent reinfection
○ This was the basis of Dr Fauci's claim.
- In the case of Relapse:
○ The number of virus copies went down and then came back up again causing symptoms to come back
- There is still not sure what's causing that
○ If external factors like medication (e.g. Kaletra or chloroquine) help suppress virus until no symptoms, they will be discharged
- But when going back to their lives, virus could start replicating again and person could get symptoms again.
- These relapse cases seem to come up when your own immune system cannot fully eradicate virus by itself.
○ Just because you are discharged does not mean virus is gone, it could be that medication is merely supressing it.
- Virus can multiply again
How long does virus stay in body? In some countries people don't know what to do with the dead bodies of the infected.
- In Asia we usually bury, but one common thing we see in corpses is that it doesn't just infect lungs, but also the entire body
○ So there is a concern that touching the corpse will lead to infection.
○ So in Korea, they cremate all corpses
How long will virus remain in corpse's body?
- They can't test for that. They'd have to take the temperature, humidity, and weather conditions into account.
- From stool tests, longest period in the virus has stayed for 26 days.
- When a person dies, the bacteria inside them will decay the body quickly. So if bacteria is faster than virus in taking over, then virus can't last because it can't survive long outside of a living cell
○ As a result, it could die in a couple of days
We are now hearing people in 20's and 30's are dying from virus, can you provide an update on this?
- Young people can still die from the virus. We can't say it's safe for all young people.
- Younger people can still end up in critical condition if they get a serious condition of covid and go to the hospital at a later stage.
○ The sooner you get treated, the higher your chance of recovering.
- There is also something called "Cytokine storm" where a perfectly healthy young person's immune system overreacts when they get the virus, and the pneumonia can lead to inflammations all over the body and even death
So a healthy person can die from covid?
- Yes. It's called the cytokine storm. It is nothing new
- The H5N1 avian flu infected 18 people in HK and 6 passed away. All 6 were healthy people.
Why does Cytokine Storm happen?
- The fundamental goal of immune system is to protect your body from external agents like bacteria and viruses by attacking them.
○ Imagine the cytokine is a bullet. The lymphatic system and immune system are shooting these bullets at the virus
○ If the cytokine only attacked the virus, that's the ideal situation, but sometimes it may overreact and damage not only the virus but your own lung tissue and other parts of your body.
- So you can say younger peoples bodies are so active that they overreact to the virus and their attacks are so excessive it leads to side effects.
Is there a way to predict Cytokine storm?
- No way to predict right now.
Is it true that people with different blood types (i.e. A, O, B) get infected differently by Covid, is this true?
- This is a thesis from China primarily from patients in Wuhan which said there were more A blood patients that O, and therefore A must be more susceptible to the virus than O
- It's a speculation but not conclusive data.
Last time, we mentioned that the skin doesn't have receptors so the virus can't enter the body through it, but what if you get a open wound or cut? Can virus penetrate that?
- No current reported cases like that so far, but in his opinion, when you get an open wound, then your blood vessel can be exposed and there are receptors in your blood vessels and the virus can bind to that.
- Probability is very low, but in theory you can still get infected like that
Can a human infect another animal? Like dogs or pets?
- Recently, a dog in hong kong got infected and passed away.
- There's another case that a tiger got a virus too in new york.
- So yes, it can be passed to other animals.
If i have Covid and don't have symptoms, how long does it take until I can be sure the virus is gone and out of my system?
- Virus stays in body for 2-3 weeks.
- With stool tests, it was found it stays in stool for up to 26 days and in some cases even longer than that
So then can we say the virus will be gone in a month?
- Can't say for sure.
- That's why even when there is no pandemic, you should have social distancing
How long should we social distance for?
- The virus is only 100 days old and we still have alot of questions. We don't know how many months it'll take until the virus is completely out of your system.
- In Korea, longest case so far from point patient got diagnosed until now is 52 days.
- But the duration could vary especially for people who have low immune system.
How do we make our immune system stronger to help fight Covid? Does flu vaccines work?
- No Flu vaccines don't work.
- To have immunity against Covid you need specific neutralizing antibodies. If you have those specific antibodies, that means you have immunity
- But most people don't have those antibodies unless you've had it or are currently fighting it off right now.
So no way to boost immunity?
- No natural way. Only if there is vaccine or if you have that specific antibody.
- But most people don't have that antibody.
How effective are cotton masks?
- In theory, a mask is supposed to protect us from droplets of a size of 5 microns or bigger
- But those droplets can penetrate cotton mask
- But in the end, cotton mask is better than nothing but not as effective as the medical grade masks
Are masks effective if we wash and reuse them?
- For KF80 masks, they did a performance test when reused and found that its efficiency dropped by 1/3rd
- So it was proven that its protection efficiency dropped by 30%
Is the virus affected by any other factors besides temperature and humidity? What causes the lifespan of virus to differ between different surfaces?
- Depends on characteristic of the material. The virus can live long on a hard surface like a wooden table or stainless steel, but on fabric or paper, it will die quickly
○ This is because on fabric or paper, it gets absorbed and dried out quickly
- On hard surfaces, the droplet won't get absorbed by the material so it will survive longer.
- So on phone surfaces, it could last longer
Recently Trump recommended hydroxychloroquine as the "game changing" drug. What's the difference between chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine? Can we go ahead and use it now? Does it work?
- Chloroqine is a medication for malaria and treats malaria in the human body
- There's a product called chloroquine phosphate and another product called hydroxychloroquine.
○ But both just act as chloroquine when it enters the body.
- In france, they tried treating Covid19 patients with chloroquine in combination with an antibiotic called azithromycin and it was found effective when compared to patients who didn't get it.
○ That's why Trump said it's a game changer and that every American should stock up on it.
○ But, there was a case where one person passed away and another in critical condition after using it.
§ Therefore, this is not an official treatment, and the President should be careful about things he says
So should people stop consuming chloroquine?
- Chloroquine is a prescription drug so a doctor needs to prescribe it
- But Chloroquine Phosphate powder is informally used to disinfect so it might be impure in that it contains other substances and people could overdose it.
- The person that passed away that took Chloroquine died because it caused irregular heartbeat as it is very toxic to the heart
- Right now doctors using hydroxychloroquine to treat patients with Covid19 when needed
Does hydroxychloroquine work 100%? Is it effective?
- It's not proven. We're just grasping at straws.
Are there any side effects of hydroxychloroquine?
- But if patients like these use medication longer, the side effects will be more prominent and risk will be higher.
○ The drug might not only attack the virus but other parts of the body as well, like the cytokine storm mentioned earlier.
- Overdosing chloroquine can cause damage to your heart, and it may be toxic to your eye and retina and you may end up visually impaired
- Overall it is dangerous for public to consume without doctors prescription and proper dosage.
How long will it take for the clinical trials to be completed for hydroxychloroquine to be approved?
- Guessing maybe 3-4 months.
- They are testing a few drugs at once to repurpose in case hydroxychloroquine doesn't work
How many years do you think it'll take before we're faced with another virus of this magnitude?
- In 2003 we had SARS, in 2009 we had Swine Flu, and in 2015 we had MERS-Cov
○ Now in 2019/20 we have Covid.
- So historically it has been 6 yrs, 6 yrs, and now 5 yrs. The duration got shorter.
- He predicts the next one will come even sooner.
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Last edited by mvadg : 17th April 2020 at 06:07.
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16th April 2020, 16:57
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Thanks
! Stock markets are soaring. Let us keep our fingers crossed. Seems STAT is a well known medical journal!
