"Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands, wipe down surfaces with sanitizing wipes. Keep your phone clean too," said Dr. Michelle Barron, medical director for Infection Control and Prevention at the University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus. "Stay hydrated, eat healthy. I mean, common things we recommend for flu actually are very much applicable for this as well."
"The reality is that people don't actually need the masks," said Dr. Michelle Barron, medical director for Infection Control and Prevention at the University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus. "I think almost everyone I've seen outside of the hospital, that's wearing these in public, don't even have them on properly … I think [what] ends up happening is that it gives them a false sense of security and then they don't realize that their hands are far more likely to be the way they're going to catch this."
UCHealth said it’s running exercises to specifically address what should happen if a patient with the novel coronavirus, COVID-19 gets admitted.“Now it if it comes back and the patient does have it. What we’ll do is, we’ll isolate them in our special unit. We’re one of the few adult centers here in the state that has a bio containment unit. And we have staff that are able to handle any of our highly infectious diseases, whether it’s coronavirus or ebola. And then we’ll manage them and care for them until they’re ready to get discharged,” Clinton Anderson, UCHealth Emergency Manager, said.
"There are things like certain chemotherapy drugs that you need a specific drug for a specific indication or reason. And so if that drug is not being manufactured or is being, you know, doled out based on patient need or patient severity, that could be, you know, life-altering and potentially deadly for a patient,"Sarah Anderson, PharmD, a professor at Skagg School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences told Newsy.
Generally, young children and seniors are the age groups most severely affected by influenza and other viral infections, said Dr. Sean O'Leary, an associate professor of pediatric infectious disease at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "We certainly see more impact from viruses in people who have some kind of underlying chronic disease," O'Leary said. "Children tend to do better with these diseases than older adults because, in general, they tend to be a healthier population."
Dr. Michelle Barron, an infectious disease specialist at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, on Wednesday likened preparing for the spread of the new strain of coronavirus within the United States to preparing for a hefty winter snowstorm. “It’s appropriate to say we will probably see more cases in the U.S. and throughout the world, but I don’t think that should set off an alarm,” said Barron, the medical director of infection control and prevention at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital.
Cells in a coronavirus are not unusual, according to Michelle Barron, the medical director of Infection, Prevention, and Control at UCHealth's University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus. "It's actually a cold virus," Barron said. "It's one of the most common cold viruses that we see every year." The new coronavirus strain, yet to be named, originated in Wuhan, China where hundreds have been infected. "It's an evolving story in terms of what we expect to see with this," she said.
