Eleven coronavirus cases are now confirmed here in the US. Six of them are in California. The others are in Illinois, Arizona, and Washington State.
I’ll be honest and say that I am concerned now that there are more cases. But I do feel confident that we’ll be able to contain the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.
Now regarding the latest confirmed cases in California, one is a husband who passed the virus to his wife. He had recently returned from Wuhan, China and at first, showed no symptoms when he was screened at the San Francisco International Airport. But shortly afterward, he developed a cough and a low-grade fever. And a few days after that, his wife showed symptoms.
So now there are two reported cases of person-to-person transmission of this virus here in the US.
Now the other new case in California involves a woman who also had visited Wuhan. She’s the second case in Santa Clara County, but according to officials, the two cases are not related.
The CDC updated its numbers today and there are a total of 260 people under investigation. Of that number, 82 of them are still pending. Meaning that specimens from these people have been received and need to be tested.
The good news is that so far, 167 of them have tested negative for the coronavirus.
I get the concern, so many of my patients are also worried about how this might affect them.
But when it comes to face masks, the typical surgeon mask will not help much as they are not tight fitting. So that means you could still inhale small airborne particles.
As for the N95 respirators, if you are not trained on how to use them, they won’t be effective. They can be hard to wear and feel claustrophobic. Plus they only filter out about 95% of airborne particles. And on top of that, the CDC is not recommending any masks because the risk to Americans still remains low.
If you really want to know what’s killing Americans right now, it’s the flu. There have been about 10,000 deaths so far this flu season. And the numbers keep rising. So please, if you haven’t had the flu shot consider getting it to help protect yourself and loved ones.
