Coronavirus and COVID-19: your questions answered by virus experts

What do you need to know about COVID-19 and coronavirus? We asked our readers for their top questions and sought answers from two of Australia’s leading virus and vaccine experts.

Today’s podcast episode features Professor Michael Wallach and Dr Lisa Sedger – both from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney – answering questions from you, our readers. An edited transcript is below.

And if you have any questions yourself, please add them to the comments below.

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Transcript

Sunanda Creagh: Hi, I’m Sunanda Creagh. I’m the Digital Storytelling editor at The Conversation, and I’m here today with two of Australia’s leading researchers on viruses and vaccines.

Lisa Sedger: Hi, my name’s Lisa Sedger. I’m an academic virologist at the University of Technology Sydney. And I do research on novel anti-viral agents and teach virology.

Michael Wallach: I’m Professor Michael Wallach, the Associate Head of School for the School of Life Science (at the University of Technology Sydney) and my expertise in the area of development of vaccines.

Sunanda Creagh: And today, we’re asking these researchers to answer questions about coronavirus and COVID-19 from you guys, our readers and our audience. We’re going to kick it off with Dr. Sedger. Adam would like to know: how long can this virus survive in various temperatures on a surface, say, a door handle or a counter at a public place?

Lisa Sedger: Oh, well, that’s an interesting question, because we hear a variety of answers. Some people say that these types of envelope viruses can exist for two to three days, but it really depends on the amount of moisture and humidity and what happens on that surface afterwards, whether it’s wiped off or something. So potentially for longer than that, potentially up to a week. But with cleaning and disinfectants, etc, not very long.

Sunanda Creagh: And what’s an envelope virus?

Lisa Sedger: Well, viruses are basically nucleic acid. So DNA like is in all of the cells in our body or RNA. And then they have a protein coat and then outside of that they have an envelope that’s made of lipids. So it’s just an outer layer of the virus. And if it’s made of lipids, you can imagine any kind of detergent like when you’re doing your dishes, disrupts all the lipids in the fat. That’s how you get all the grease off your plates. Right? So any detergent like that will disrupt the envelope of the virus and make it non-infective. So cleaning surfaces is a good way to try and eliminate an infective virus particle from, for example, door handles, surfaces, et cetera.

Sunanda Creagh: And Professor Wallach, Paul would like to know: should people cancel travel plans given that this virus is already here? Does travelling make the spread worse? And that’s international travel or domestic travel.

Michael Wallach: So this question has come up to many different governments from around the world who’ve reacted very differently. Australia’s been very strategic in banning travel to certain places. And of course, those places you would not want to travel to at the time when there’s an outbreak like China, Italy, Iran, etc.. I was also asked the question on ABC Tasmania: should the Tasmanians restrict domestic travel to Tasmania? At the time, they had a single case. And I said to them, if you have one case, you most likely have more. You will not prevent the entry of the virus into Tasmania. But what restricting travel can do is restrict the number of people who are seeding that area with virus and make it more manageable. So it’s a question of timing. As I was saying to you earlier, the cost-benefit of closing off travel has to be weighed very carefully because the economic impacts are very great. So I think it’s a case by case basis. Ultimately, the planet is now seeded. And we’re moving into the stage of exponential growth and that it will affect travel very severely, where in all likelihood, travel will be very much curtailed now.

Sunanda Creagh: And this question’s from our reader, David. He wants to know: with the flu killing more people each year than coronavirus and mostly the same demographic, why is this outbreak receiving so much attention? Can’t we just catch the flu just as easily without cancelling events and travel plans?

Lisa Sedger: Yes, and I understand the question. Flu exists. We get it seasonally every year and then we get pandemic flu. And yes, people do die from influenza. I think it was 16,000 people in the US died last US winter. But the issue with this virus is that we don’t yet know how to treat it particularly well. We’re trialling anti-viral drugs in China at the very moment. There’s clinical trials on experimental drugs. There’s drugs that doctors are using. But until that data comes in and we actually know what regime of anti-viral drugs (are best) to use, then we don’t really yet know how to treat it with anti-viral drugs. The other thing is with flu, we have a vaccine. People can take the vaccine. Somebody gets sick in their family, the other family members can take the vaccine and prevent the spread of the virus. So the difference is with flu, we have ways to control it. We know about the disease. We know how it presents. This virus, we’re still understanding the clinical presentation and in different cohorts. So different age groups, different countries, different situations, we’re still understanding the symptoms. And we don’t yet fully know how to control it by antivirals. And we don’t have a vaccine yet.

Michael Wallach: Can I just add to that a bit? I think one of the reasons we’re being so careful is when it broke and Wuhan, at the beginning the mortality rate was extremely high. And with related viruses like SARS, and MERS that went as high as 35%, whereas flu mortality rates is usually around 0.1%. So it was that very high mortality rate that gave a real shock. Had it continued, it would have been devastating. We’re very fortunate that now we see it dropping down to the 2 to 3% level and some say much lower.

Lisa Sedger: And we also know now that some people get COVID, have very minimal symptoms and almost don’t even know that they’ve been sick. So I think that fear and anxiety, in that sense, is lowering.

Sunanda Creagh: And Molly wants to know: how far off is a vaccine?

Michael Wallach: So, we are working on vaccines in Australia. The group in Melbourne was the first to be able to isolate and grow the virus. And I’ve been in touch with them, in fact, this morning. We’re working collaboratively nationally as well as internationally, collaborating with people at Stanford Medical School who through Stanford, in collaborations we have with them, we have worldwide about 15 vaccine projects going, plus all sorts of industry companies are aiming to make vaccines. In fact, one company in Israel early on announced that they believe that they can get to a vaccine within a few weeks. The problem with the vaccine is you may produce it even quickly, but it’s testing it and making sure that it’s actually going to help. There’s a fear, with COVID-19, that if it is not formulated correctly, to make a long story short, it can actually exacerbate the disease. So everyone has to take it slowly and carefully so that we don’t actually cause more problems than we currently have. But I’m optimistic and believe that we’ll get there. The WHO declared it would take 18 months. I would like to present a more optimistic view, not based on anything that substantial, but I think we can do better than that. And it is a great learning curve for the next time this happens.

Lisa Sedger: Can I make a comment on that, too? Recently, we’ve just seen Africa experience a very significant outbreak of Ebola virus, and there’s been an experimental vaccine that’s been administered that has largely controlled that outbreak. I think the people working in vaccines and the people who do the safety and efficacy studies, we’ve learnt a lot from how to administer vaccines, how to get the data we need to show safety more quickly than we might have in the past. So in the sense we’ve learnt, we’re learning lessons constantly from viral outbreaks. It might not be the same virus, might not be the same country, even the same continent. But we’re learning how to do these things more efficiently and more quickly. And always the issue is weighing up safety versus the ethics of the need to administer all get it, get the drug out there as quickly as possible.

Sunanda Creagh: This reader asks: isn’t lining up at fever clinics for tests just going to spread it even more?

Michael Wallach: So for sure, the way in which people are processed at clinics is crucial and the minimal distance you should keep from a person who’s infected is, according again to the WHO, is one metre. So the clinics have to ensure that spread is minimised, not only spread between people waiting in line, but to the health workers themselves. We’ve had real problems for health workers in China. Several died. And we face that problem here. One of the things we have to do is ensure that we protect our health workers because otherwise they’re not going to want to go in and actually see the patients. Unfortunately, masks alone do not work. We can’t rely on them. So i