Analyst: Questions remain about immunity to virus

Описание: (11 Apr 2020) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus134096, apus134094

The former leader of the Global Rapid Response Team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday explained what we know about the COVID-19 pandemic.  
"Our knowledge of COVID-19, has expanded greatly in the past two months," Dr. Cyrus Shahpar told the Associated Press in an interview.
'We still have critical gaps in terms of the proportion of people who say they have it without having symptoms, how much that contributes to the spread," Shahpar said.
He added: "Those kinds of questions are extremely important to understand how to best battle this virus."
Shahpar is currently the the director of our Prevent Epidemics program at Resolve to Save Lives Initiative, a global public health initiative.
He's says the fear of the unknown that is gripping the globe is "a natural consequence of something that's unprecedented."
Shahpar said that until the curent healt crisis, nobody was expecting to have the world's economy "essentially shut down."
He described the situation in New York, the recent epicenter of the current outbreak as "horrific."
"If you look at the information right now, there's essentially two Chinas in New York state," Shahpar said.
"You have one 70th of the population, but twice as many cases and deaths as all of China so far. As of today. So it really is an intense transmission that's going on."
Shahpar said, until we have a treatment and vaccine the virus is "essentially here to stay."
Unlike traditional flu strains, Shahpar said, "we don't know that there's any seasonality component" to COVID-19.
Until we have effective treatment or vaccine, "this could be something that we cycle on and off in terms of staying inside or being out," Shahpar said.

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