transmit, where does it want to go, and let's protect ourselves. I'm Dr. Peter

Lin. I'm a family physician in Toronto, Canada. The coronavirus is a family of

viruses that can cause as mild things as just a common cold, all the way up to

SARS or MERS. These are these bad pneumonias that we're talking about. And

basically what these viruses are, they look like a tennis ball with all these

spikes sticking out of it. And depending on the type of spike, it allows that

virus to attach to certain places. So some viruses, they have this spike that

attaches to your nose. So basically you just get a common cold.

But the SARS virus and this new virus that we're talking about has the spike

that allows it to attach to the cells in your lung and when it attaches there, it

puts in information to make photocopies of itself. So it uses our equipment to

make more viruses. >> I'm declaring a public health emergency of international

concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus.

>> Most of the coronaviruses live in animals. In this particular case, it was

from Wuhan. There was a fish market where they were selling live animals and the

thought is that the virus was in a live animal, then it crossed into a human. But

then what we found was that people were getting sick in terms of healthcare

workers, in terms of family members that were looking after them, which now meant

that the virus can pass from human to another human. Just like all viruses, it

needs to reach a target, which is your lung and it has to get there with your

help. It has no feet and no wings. So therefore it needs us to move it there.

So that's why we keep saying don't hang around sneezy people because you're

gonna breathe it in. And don't touch your face because that's how the virus is

going to get in. The masks are helpful, but they're not necessary because they're

leaky. The ones that you and I buy basically have pockets here, so therefore

the virus can get in. What the masks really do is they stop us from touching

our face. If you're sick, we tend to mask you, so therefore you're not spewing out

the viruses to other people sitting around you. The true people that have the

real masks are the N95. Those are sealed. These are for the doctors that may be

caring for the patients. So in the beginning, the coronavirus will cause

kind of like flu-like symptoms or a cold. So people just get the stuffy nose, that

kind of thing. But you'll understand that as soon as that virus starts

manufacturing in your lung cells, they're producing all these copies of the virus.

All of a sudden now you kill the lung cells, so now you can't exchange oxygen

and that's why one of the early symptoms is people get very short of breath and

they tend to have a difficult time breathing and that's why they end up in

hospital. So currently unfortunately we don't have a direct treatment for the

coronavirus, so we don't have a medication that can kill it off. And so

it's really supportive. So in other words, the patient can't breathe, we give them

oxygen help them to breathe, they can't drink, so therefore we give them fluids

to support them. Their kidneys begin to shut down, we help them with all those

things. So it's a very supportive process. This is a new virus that we've never

seen before, so our immune system, our army, are having a hard time figuring out

what to do. So usually what we have to do is we make something called antibodies.

So these are things that can grab on to the spikes that we see on the virus and

it'll get rid of the virus for you and that will actually bring you back to

good health. So therefore the elderly may have a

worse outcome and of course the young children, the babies, their immune

system is not so good either, so they may not make those antibodies as well. So

just remember your hands may be with virus. Virus cannot hurt you because it

can't get through the skin, but the moment I do this, now I've brought the

virus right to where it wants to go. So let's remember not to touch our hands to

our face. So let's say you think that you might have been on a plane or you might

have bumped into somebody that has it, what should you do? So the first thing is

to contact a healthcare worker to tell them that potentially you have it. If

you're feeling symptoms and you're going to go into a facility, call ahead. OK. So

whether you're calling the paramedics or whether you're calling the hospital or

your doctor, just mention that you were on a flight. If you don't have any

symptoms, then what we do is a little bit of a self-quarantine. In other words, we

can just keep you away from other people and so you don't go in to parties, don't

go with your friends, don't go into public transportation. So we can contain

it very easily by making sure that you do a self-confinement so to speak for

the let's say 7 to 14 days is the longest incubation time, so after that if

you're feeling well, then you don't have anything to worry about.

If we get the facts right, then we don't have to be overly worried, but we do the

right things so that we don't get the virus ourselves, and that we

don't pass it on to others. And if we look after each other in this way, this

virus will have nowhere to go. It needs us to move it, it needs us to

make copies for it, and if we don't help it, then the virus will stop. So we have

the power to do that, right now.