Covid-19 is still very much a mystery. Photo by Pixabay.
We’re two months into this pandemic, and there remain more questions than answers. What follows is a look at some of the most recent information.
Will a person who recovers from covid-19 be immune?
This is crucial.
B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said that while everyone is hopeful that there will be some level of immunity for some amount of time, maybe even years, we don’t yet know if that is the case. In a fairly massive understatement, she said: “that would really help with the control of this virus.”
Medical experts are still working on a serology test that would show whether a person has been previously affected by covid-19 and whether they have immunity in their blood. The early tests have been frustrating because they’re not very accurate, Henry said.
“The sensitivity and the specificity have not been that great,” she said.
Some answers may be forthcoming – Canada has just approved a serology test and B.C. is offering residents a chance to be part of a study, if they complete a survey about their experience during the pandemic.
Why does this virus affect people in so many different ways?
The early stories about covid-19 portrayed it as a respiratory illness, affecting the lungs. In Italy, they ran out of ventilators and hospitals were overwhelmed. As the virus spreads around the world, it has become clear that it can affect people in many very different ways.
Some people have no symptoms, some have covid-toes, some need a ventilator, others have strokes or kidney damage. It can cause inflammation, a loss of smell and taste, diarrhea and vomiting and sometimes a cytokine storm, an extreme immune overreaction.
There are plenty of theories about why the disease can present itself so differently in different people, but because the virus is so new, nobody is really sure yet exactly why this is happening.
Why does covid-19 kill more men than women?
In B.C., up to April 29, 55 per cent of covid-19 cases were found in women and 45 per cent in men. But more men have been admitted to hospital, more men have needed intensive care and more men have died. The data shows that men make up 60.9 per cent of hospitalized cases, 68.9 per cent of ICU patients and 72.1 per cent of all deaths in B.C. Those ratios are similar to what has been seen around the world. Dr. Bonnie Henry said in April that no one knows why men are getting sicker, but that it might have to do with women’s immune systems being developed to carry children. Others have said it may have to do with an enzyme involved in how the virus attacks the body. A European study found men often have higher concentrations of that enzyme in their bodies than women. But those are just theories. For now no one is certain.
What’s the deal with children?
At first, reports said children who got infected with covid-19 usually had mild cases and they tend to have low infection rates. Since then, there have been more reports of children getting, and sometimes dying from, an inflammatory syndrome that could be related to the virus. The first reports of this syndrome came out of Europe, but more recently Canada and the U.S. have reported cases. The jury is still out on children’s role in spreading the virus, although an information document prepared by the B.C. government says “there is currently no documented evidence of child-to-adult transmission” and that “there are no documented cases of children bringing an infection into the home, from school or otherwise.”
Several countries around the world are gradually reopening schools and cases in those countries have not spiked, although in some cases, such as Germany, the number has risen.
Is it safe to reopen?
Countries around the world are seeing increases in cases as they experiment with opening up. This is going to be a time of trying things out to see what level of human interaction can keep the virus under control and the prevent the hospitals from being overloaded. Like everything else, we don’t really know what is going to work. Expect lots of to-ing and fro-ing as countries try to figure out what Dr. Bonnie Henry calls “the sweet spot.” Hopefully soon there will be more answers, instead of just more questions.
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