COVID-19: Avoid Touching Your Face. Approximately 95% of Cold Cases Begin with Hand-to-Face Contact.

A double board-certified medical oncologist and internist, Mark Scholz, MD, gives an update on the COVID-19 virus, including practical information to prevent contracting the disease, and, in the event of infection, tips to help prevent the virus from spreading to the lungs and causing pneumonia.

0:21 The COVID-19 is similar to a cold virus but with an increased potential for severe pneumonia because it spreads to the lungs more often and is more aggressive once there.

0:45 Not everyone is equally at risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19. Those with the greatest risk are elderly people, smokers, the immunodeficient, those with a history of heart disease, those with diabetes, alcoholics, and people with pre-existing conditions such as emphysema, asthma, liver disease, or kidney disease.

1:11 Being related to cold viruses, COVID-19 causes upper-respiratory symptoms and spreads through coughing, sneezing, and most often through touching one's face after touching an inanimate object that has the virus. COVID-19 can survive for seven days on inanimate objects. COVID-19 can not penetrate your skin. It can only enter the body through the mouth, eyes, and nose.

2:40 COVID-19 is like a typical cold unless it drops into the lungs and causes pneumonia. Not all cases of pneumonia are serious enough for hospitalization, but cases serious enough to require hospitalization are those with symptoms of high fevers, serious cough, shortness of breath, and pain when they take a deep breath. Death from pneumonia is much less common than it used to be. Antibiotics can prevent bacterial pneumonia which is a complication of viral pneumonia.

3:50 COVID-19's mortality rate is not clear, but an experiment performed on the Diamond Princess cruise ship found it to be around 1% in an older population.

4:52 The best way to avoid getting COVID-19 is to avoid touching your face. Around 95% of cold cases begin with hand-to-face contact.

7:26 There is no direct treatment for coronavirus, but it is well known that zinc helps to prevent the spread of virus from one part of the body to another. Anyone who starts to experience cold symptoms should keep their mucous membranes bathed in zinc until the symptoms go away. Cold-EEZE and Zicam are zinc-based over the counter cold treatments.

8:02 There is some preliminary research that the antibiotic hydroxychloroquine enables zinc to work more effectively to prevent the spread of virus within the body. Talk to your doctor if you start to develop viral pneumonia about the possibility of including hydroxychloroquine to your zinc treatment.

8:38 If you have upper respiratory symptoms, like a runny nose, you should not try to sniff the nasal secretions in because it can cause the virus to go down into the lungs and increase the risk of pneumonia.

9:10 Conclusion

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