For the third time in 20 years, a coronavirus has made the jump from animals to humans, and scientists are drawing on past experience to determine the best way to handle the deadly, rapidly spreading disease.
There's no specific treatment for coronaviruses – a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to pneumonia. With time, most people will recover on their own, doctors say.
The best way to treat symptoms is to take pain and fever medications, use a room humidifier or take a hot shower to help ease a sore throat and cough, drink plenty of liquids, and rest, the CDC says. That typically includes taking Tylenol, aspirin or decongestant, said Jay Cook, Chief Medical Officer at Providence Regional Medical Center in Washington, which received the first U.S. case of the Wuhan virus.
"(Treatment) is really supportive care," Cook said. "It's pretty miserable for a while, but the virus typically runs its course."
However, should the virus cause a secondary bacterial infection, doctors would prescribe antibiotics, Cook said. Sometimes a ventilator may be necessary.
Scientists are also investigating alternative approaches to treating the Wuhan coronavirus – including some antiviral medications and convalescent plasma treatments – but none have been FDA-approved. A vaccine, meanwhile, is still months or possibly years away.
"There are no drugs that are currently approved, so everything now is experimental," said Michael Ison, an infectious disease specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
There are seven strains of coronavirus that infect humans, according to Greg Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group. Four are common colds, but three have "pathological significance": severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and, now, the Wuhan coronavirus, formally called the 2019 novel coronavirus.
"This is the third one now," Poland said. "The previous two, SARS and MERS, were controlled with individual and population-level public health measures. No vaccine. No anti-viral. They were controlled with handwashing, face masks, isolation, etcetera. They’re not high-tech, sexy solutions, but they are basic."
In 2003, SARS caused global panic when more than 8,000 people became sick and nearly 800 died across dozens of countries. A decade later, MERS began to spread to countries in and near the Arabian Peninsula, as well as in South Korea, killing more than 850 people. SARS has since been controlled, and MERS has been "essentially controlled," Poland said.
"We know about SARS and MERS and other coronaviruses. But this one’s novel. We don’t have a lot of information about how this virus interacts. We know nothing, for example, about how this will affect pregnant women, who are particularly vulnerable to influenza," Poland said.
Health officials say the Wuhan virus is low-risk and probably spreads through tiny droplets when a person coughs or sneezes. The likelihood of contracting the coronavirus, and of suffering a severe case, increases among the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions.
It's still early on, but Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, estimates that about 4% of people who contract the Wuhan coronavirus die from it. The moratlity rate for SARS was closer to 9 or 10%, and, for MERs, about 30 to 35%, he said.
When the first U.S. case of Wuhan coronavirus arrived at Providence, hospital staff took an abundance of caution to wear protective clothing and treat the patient in isolation, Cook said. Doctors took a lab sample from the patient, sent it to the CDC in Atlanta and received the results within 24 hours, Cook said.
"The symptoms are almost the same (as the cold). There's really not a good way to tell the difference," Cook said. "You depend on laboratory tests."
The isolation room, which the hospital has kept up and running ever since the Ebola outbreak several years ago, has a variety of specialty features: negative air flow, a contained restroom and an adjacent room for personnel to don and doff their protective equipment.
"We used exactly the same processes that we would have used for Ebola," Cook said.
China, meanwhile, is addressing the outbreak on a large scale: Authorities in Wuhan said Friday they were constructing a 1,000-bed hospital to treat coronavirus patients. The hospital is planned for a 270,000-square-foot lot and will be completed early February.
"In the absence of a vaccine or treatment, the best way you contain outbreaks is to identify cases, isolate them, and trace contacts," Fauci said.
While the Wuhan coronavirus has drawn international attention in recent weeks, Poland encouraged people not to forget about the threat of influenza.
"Nobody worries about influenza, but my guess is far more people will die from influenza this year than from any coronavirus," Poland said. "If this were pandemic influenza but we called it something exotic like 'novel coronavirus,' people would be out of their minds. Yet people don’t give it a second thought. We can’t even get them get flu vaccines."
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January 25, 2020 at 06:00PM
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How do you actually treat Wuhan coronavirus? - USA TODAY
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