There is significant global media attention on the spread of coronavirus, which has led to justifiable consumer concern about the risks from COVID-19 and an Infodemic.
Just a few months ago, the scientific community didn’t know this virus existed. And now, understanding SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes — COVID-19 — will be critical to developing treatments and helping to stop it from spreading further.
Coronaviruses have three main activities: to deliver genetic instructions in the form of RNA across the membrane of uninfected human cells, to allow newly-made RNA to escape from an infected cell, and to protect the RNA during its journey to discover new, uninfected cells.
A few days ago one of our province’s chief minister received a detailed briefing on coronavirus from relevant experts and officials.
The purpose was to provide him all the information he required as the chief executive of a large province, so he could make the right decisions. At the end of the briefing, the chief minister asked a question innocently: how does this corona bite?
Fact 1: CoV is short for CoronaVirus, Coronavirus. This is the name of the family of viruses (there are about 40 of them), which bear resemblance with the solar corona due to the spinous crests.
Fact 2: Coronaviruses are impostors from biology. The tailpiece of each spike “imitates†the molecule of a useful substance, so that the cellular receptors gladly pull it into themselves, and the whole virus is squeezed into the cell after the spike is in. This is how infection occurs.
Fact 3: The term “new coronavirus” (novel or NCoV) means that before neither scientists nor the cells met this virus before.
Fact 4: Over 2 million years of evolution, our immune system has learned to deal with most known infections, but the new coronavirus catches it by surprise, this it’s so hard to cope with and quite easy to get infected.Fact
5: Once in a cell, the virus “seizes†control over it and forces it to endlessly produce its own copies – instead of its usual proteins. A chain reaction begins. As a result, the cell dies, but the carrier of the infection becomes contagious.
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Myths and facts |