Medical Doctor Drops FACTS on Novel Coronavirus in TikTok Video

February 5, 2020

Doctor Dagny Zhu, an eye doctor at NVISION Eye Center, is using TikTok to lay down facts about the novel coronavirus (or 2019-nCoV).

In her TikTok video, Dr. Zhu tried to calm everyone down by comparing the numbers of infected people and the mortality rate of the novel coronavirus to previous pandemics, such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), H5N1 bird flu, and the H1N1 swine flu.

“Facts about Wuhan coronavirus from a Chinese-American doctor,” the doctor wrote in her video.

She listed data gathered by the medical community: the virus has killed 400 people, infected over 20,000, and has a mortality rate of around 2%.

“But we’ve seen deadlier,” Dr. Zhu wrote.

SARS, a virus that originated in China, killed 774 people and infected 8,098 others globally. The virus peaked in 2002 to 2003, affecting many countries, with a mortality rate of 9.6%.

MERS, on the other hand, has a much higher mortality rate of 34.4%, according to the data gathered by the World Health Organization. Over 2,400 laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported on the virus as of November 2019. The virus first emerged in September 2012.

H5N1 avian influenza, or commonly referred to as the bird flu, has infected about 861 people in cases reported from 2003 to 2019, according to the WHO. It has killed 455 people and has a mortality rate of 53%.

The H1N1 swine flu is a pandemic known to have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), citing a study published by The Lancet Infectious Diseases Online, estimated the range of deaths from the 2009 H1N1 influenza to be between 151,700 and 575,400.

“Luckily all of these viruses eventually disappeared except the seasonal flu, which infects millions and kills 500,000 every year,” the doctor said in her video. “All our lives we’ve lived amongst contagious deadly viruses.”

She reminds everyone to wash their hands and not touch their eyes, nose, and mouth, and get the flu vaccine.

“Stop the panic and blame game and be kind,” she wrote to end her short clip.

Feature Image via @dzeyemd

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