CalMatters spoke with Lee Riley, a professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and chair of the division of infectious diseases and vaccinology, to make sense of the numbers.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Why is the novel coronavirus spreading so far, and so fast?
We don’t really know why this is happening. But one of the observations being made in China, where they have a lot of experiences now, is that the virus seems to be able to transmit even before someone becomes symptomatic( not showing symptoms) .
And then even after an infected person recovers from the illness, they continue to shed the virus up to two weeks to even 20 days. So there’s more opportunity for an infected person to transmit. That’s why I think so many other people get infected — because there’s many more days of infectious period for a person to contract the virus. That may be one of the reasons that it’s spreading so quickly.
- Ability to transmit before showing symptoms.
- Ability to transmit by recovered people (20 days)
Are this rather diabolical characteristics of the virus proof that it could not have come from some bioweapons lab. Or are they the proof that it actually did.
There’s a doctor I heard saying that the virus can remain in the air for 3 hours. So if someone coughs in the street even if you come 2 hours later and you have a mask it can still go in through your eyes. Then I also saw an article that tests were done on dead Corona patients test positive 27 days after the patients die. Is even Ebola this infectious?