In a week when the coronavirus closures and quarantines
hit like falling dominoes – the lockdown in Italy, the
empty workplaces and college campuses in the U.S.,
suspended sports seasons, canceled festivals – far less
attention fell on the global scientific community’s drive to find
treatments for the new virus.
But researchers are already suggesting strategies to help
patients suffering from the virus, which is marked by fever,
coughing and difficulty breathing. One treatment could be just
weeks away.
With no vaccine expected anytime
soon, treatments are crucial to saving the lives of thousands of
the infected, especially high-risk patients – the elderly, those
with compromised immune systems and those with chronic
illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease.
I’m very hopeful and very positive. We will get through
this, said Robert Kruse, a doctor in the Department of
Pathology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. I have been
shocked this week at the measures that have been taken (to
alter daily life). They were probably the correct ones, given
that they have worked in other countries.