CLEARLAKE— The community weekly event Judge’s Breakfast in Clearlake, presented the county’s Public Health Officer Gary Pace this week to talk about Lake County Public Health activities, focusing on one of the biggest global plagues these days: the coronavirus.
According to the World Health Organization, coronaviruses are a large family of viruses found in both animals and humans. Some infected people and are known to cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Coronavirus (CoV) is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans. The new coronavirus, now called 2019-nCoV, had not been previously detected before the outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
The organization claims that, as with other respiratory illnesses, “infection with 2019-nCoV can cause mild symptoms, including a runny nose, sore throat, cough, and fever. It can be more severe for some persons and can lead to pneumonia or breathing difficulties.” More rarely, the disease can be fatal. Older people and people with pre-existing medical conditions (such as diabetes and heart disease) appear to be more vulnerable to become severely ill with the virus.
“The virus is very intense over in China right now. It’s spreading slowly. Some of the people that were in that cruise ship are right now back in the states. There is a couple of them that are in Napa, Queen of the Valley hospital. They were not denied of any contact with the community. They came back, realized they were positive for the virus, and they were brought to the restricted infection control into that medical center. They are in isolation there”, said Pace. “I think the risk of that spreading out of the community is very low. As far as I am aware – and I am the first one to know, really; at least, from the federal point of view – there have been no recent travelers from China in Lake County. There have been a few in Mendocino and Sonoma, but none of those have tested positive or are considered high risk.”
The public health officer pointed the virus is new and there is not much experience available to deal with it. “Most of the information comes out of China, which is suspected. They are not really transparent with the information,” he said. “The fatality rate right now is about the same as the flu – 2%. It seems like it is mainly in the older, sicker population. Some illnesses tend to affect kids more or healthier adults more. Most people that are dying are over 65 and have other complicated health issues.”
“It’s challenging, though, to predict the real consequences of the Coronavirus,” added Pace. “We don’t really know how bad that is going to be, how contagious it is and, basically, nobody in the world has immunity to it. For this early stage, the only tools we have are isolation and quarantine,” he concluded.
Community health worker, Bonnie Blumenthal, active member at the Judge’s Breakfast weekly events, highlighted that there is nothing urgent to worry about in terms of viruses right now: “I’m glad that the officer told us what is going on, so we have a realistic picture here, as to whether we need to worry or set something up…to take care of people who are sick, but we don’t have coronavirus here in Clearlake yet and, hopefully, we will not.”
The Judge’s breakfast occurs every Thursday morning at 7 a.m. at 14084 Lakeshore Dr, Main Street Bar and Grill in Clearlake.
