COVID-19 Insight From A Virus Expert

Katherine Shives holds a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from Washington State University. In the past, she has studied West Nile virus and other viruses in a BSL-3 containment facility. She currently works for Sartorius Virus Analytics as a Research and Development Scientist and Biological Safety Officer. She spoke with KGNU to give us the latest news on how to protect ourselves and our community from the COVID-19.

Listen to the interview below:

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“This is not like the flu… for the influenza virus, the case fatality rate is around 0.1% of known cases. In the case of coronavirus, current data and best estimates to put the case fatality rate for this virus between 1% and 5% depending on whether or not your healthcare system is overwhelmed, with the average being around 3%. So that right there puts this virus at being 10 to 30 times more deadly than influenza and additionally, there’s no baseline immunity to this virus in anyone in our population which also makes it quite more deadly.” – Katherine Shives PhD

(Image Credit: Image by WikiImages from Pixabay)

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