How much do you know about viruses?
With the recent emergence of an unfamiliar coronavirus, the world is desperate to understand the life-cycle of this new virus and ways to prevent its transmission. This current outbreak has spread to over 20 countries and healthcare professionals are doing their best to educate the public on safety measures. Everyone, including Wateroam, is taking precautions to stay healthy.
First, an introduction to viruses in general
The word ‘virus’ comes from the latin word meaning poison, slime or venom. First discovered in humans about 120 years ago, it is believed that there are 380 trillion viruses inhabiting our bodies on a daily basis.
The size of a virus varies from roughly 20 to 400 nanometers in diameter. To put this in perspective, 500 million rhinoviruses, cause of the common cold, can fit on to the head of a pin. Because of this, we tend not to notice viruses until the particularly vengeful ones enter our bodies.
This extremely small, infectious agent is considered the ‘most abundant biological entity on the planet’. But something special about these unique microbes is that they can only replicate inside the living cells of another organism. This other organism is commonly known as their ‘host cell’. This characteristic limits where the virus can reproduce, but it doesn’t limit the survival of a virus outside of a host cell. Depending on the virus strain and the surrounding conditions, viruses can remain infectious from 20 minutes to 24 hours once they leave the body. Transmission includes but not limited to: respiratory droplets, fecal matter, contact with hard and soft surfaces, vectors such as mosquitoes and ticks, and WATER.
Because of this, it is important to wash your hands regularly, disinfect all surfaces that have been in contact with the virus, protect yourself against vector-transmission, and filter any water that has potentially been contaminated.
