Yesterday, the Japanese Foreign Ministry announced that on board the cruise ship Diamond Princess, among whose passengers patients with pneumonia caused by coronavirus were identified, there are 24 citizens of the Russian Federation. This and other cases of a collision with a new infection force every word to catch doctors who are discovering new details about 2019-nCoV. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pulmonologist, head of the department of hospital therapy of the Russian National Research Medical University named after N.I. Pirogova, Chairman of the Russian Respiratory Society Alexander Chuchalin spoke about the spread of the virus.
How is the virus transmitted?
The main route is aerosol. A person coughs, droplets of bronchial secretion fall into the air. Their size is very small, two to three microns. The droplets scatter at a distance of two to three meters. Mathematicians calculated that if among three hundred Boeing passengers, one is infected, then 15-20% will be infected with these droplets, which are released to patients suffering, in this case, coronavirus.
Coronavirus is also transmitted through a handshake, is in the urine, in the stool, in the tear fluid (therefore you need to wear glasses), but it is not in the blood, like hepatitis viruses or AIDS.
How to protect yourself by doctors
Chuchalin advises doctors to wear not only glasses, but also a mask and a plague-proof suit: “There was a panic among medical personnel in 2002, especially when it came to hospitals in Singapore and Hanoi. Nurses and doctors were very seriously ill. The percentage of deaths among medical personnel was much higher than in the general population. This is one of the reasons why such strict restrictions were introduced. Imagine that you diagnosed a coronavirus infection in a medical institution and the patient is in the box. From there, the bowel movements go to the general sewer air. The air that the sick person breathes goes into the air exchanger. Therefore, the boxes used in the West have isolated dry closets, and special treatment of human bowel movements is carried out there. "
How to protect yourself mere mortals
The first rule, according to the pulmonologist, is nose hygiene. Every day it is necessary to rinse the nasal mucosa. To do this, you can use nebulizers with saline.
"When the respiratory tract is involved, it is necessary to talk about mucosal immunity. On the surface of the nasal mucosa, trachea, large bronchi there is a sufficient concentration of secretory class A immunoglobulin, lysozyme and a whole range of substances. If a person has mucosal immunity, and general immunity is normal , then the infection will still penetrate the body, so you must definitely monitor the condition of the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract.
Coming home, you need to thoroughly rinse the nasal mucosa, rinse, try to wash off the mucus that has accumulated there. Every day, a person passes so much dirt through his airways that there will not be enough buckets. And if a person smokes, then the attack on the lungs is multiplied.
“Lazolvan” or “Fluimucil” used through the nebulizer allows you to remove viruses, bacteria and fungi from the surfaces of the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract, and so on, ”said Chuchalin.
Why quarantine is needed
“When we studied the history of the 2002 virus, quarantine turned out to be the most effective method of fighting. Vietnam ended the epidemic precisely because of quarantine, and not due to drugs. Both the USA, Russia, and Germany export tourists from China and place them in certain places. But, as I was informed from Tyumen, Chinese students were quarantined there in very poor living conditions and they rebelled. The quarantine is not an easy task for the state, but it must be solved. The quarantine path is effective, it can interrupt the transfer chain of this disease, "said the academician.
