Dr. Barbara Ferrer, Director of LA County’s Department of Public Health, appeared on Inside the Issues with Alex Cohen to ease people’s fears and clear up the misinformation surrounding the coronavirus outbreak.

Ferrer says the research involved with finding a cure is ongoing, but due to how new the virus is there is still a lot that needs to be learned.

“We’re all living in a rapidly-evolving time in terms of understanding the novel of coronavirus,” said Ferrer.

Doctors are still trying to figure information out like how the virus is transmitted, what the incubation period is, and who the most at-risk patients are.

The L.A. County Department of Public Health is monitoring China closely.

“The situation in China is dire and really does legitimately give us all pause, and it’s a cause for concern,” said Ferrer.

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While the situation is being closely monitored, Ferrer says measures like wearing a face mask are not necessary at the moment. She says the only people that should be wearing face masks are either sick people to prevent spreading diseases or health care providers when dealing with patients who have a respiratory illness.

“I want to remind people that novel coronavirus is a respiratory illness,” said Ferrer.

The coronavirus symptoms include, fever, coughing, and possible getting pneumonia. Ferrer says people only need to get screened for the illness if they have these symptoms and have either traveled to places that have an outbreak of the disease or have been in close contact with someone that has a confirmed case.

Ferrer wants to emphasize that the transmission process for coronavirus is not like other diseases from the past like measles.

“It doesn’t hang out in the air, it’s not these tiny, little droplets that just stay suspended,” said Ferrer.

She says the most common way for transmission to occur is being in close contact with someone with a confirmed case for more than 10 minutes.

While there is no exact cure for coronavirus yet, Ferrer says people in Southern California are in good hands should they become ill.

”I want to reassure people here in L.A. County, we have access to some of the best health care providers and health care facilities in the world. People should be rest assured that they will get really good treatment, even in the absence of specific medications that are directed for novel coronavirus,” said Ferrer.

The number of deaths caused by coronavirus have caused many people to worry about the severity of the disease. However, Ferrer says that the majority of people that have died have either been elderly or had an underlying health condition.

”Similar to flu, often times different strains of flu target different populations who are at higher risk, but there’s always the very healthy person, who for no really understandable reason seems to have also passed,” said Ferrer.

In fact, Ferrer emphasized that people should view the flu as a more serious issue at the moment than the coronavirus outbreak.

“[The] flu’s going to kill probably 30,000 people in the United States this year, it’s already killed 9,000 people. We’ve had 13 million people infected,” said Ferrer “and there’s steps people can be taking right now to protect themselves from flu which would also protect themselves from other circulating respiratory illness.”

When it comes to dealing with people that have the coronavirus, or people who were exposed to the virus, Ferrer says there are strict guidelines health officials must follow to keep everyone safe. “We do something called Active Monitoring, which is [officials] take [patients] temperature twice a day, we check in with them, we check in whether they have symptoms, and/or any rise in their temperature if they’re running a fever,” said Ferrer.

There are also guidelines put in place to encourage those that have intimate contact with people that have confirmed cases, to stay in quarantine for 14 days after last contact with the person.

“Those are very close contacts those are household members or someone who has an intimate relationship with somebody who has a confirmed case,” said Ferrer.

Social media has acted as a hindrance to health officials who are trying to spread the right information.

“In this case I think [social media] is spreading a lot of inaccurate information,” said Ferrer. She also emphasized that fears of coronavirus shouldn’t cause people to ostracize others.

“There is no reason to exclude people from public activities here in L.A. County because they’re Chinese or they’re Asian, or you think they traveled, “ said Ferrer. “The only people who really can’t go to public activities are people who have symptoms of illness, everybody else should go about their daily business.”

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