Coronavirus (or COVID-19) has taken the world by storm, and after a frenzied period at the beginning of the year, many countries are seeing a rise in the number of cases. Despite the efforts from scientists and researchers across the globe, there is still no vaccine for the virus. This means society is still relying on social distancing and hygiene measures to limit the spread of the virus.

With the general public unused to this kind of phenomenon, it’s down to the experts to keep us up to date and informed.

Here are 4 Expert COVID-19 quotes…

…on transmission from asymptomatic individuals:

“There are clear cases of transmission from asymptomatic infected persons to others. We do not yet know whether it is as efficient as from symptomatic persons who may have higher viral loads. However, the symptomatic person may be in far less social circulation than the asymptomatic person, but at a population level, the asymptomatic persons who may be less infectious but are more likely to be socially linked may represent a very substantial public health threat.”
— Sten H. Vermund, MD, PhD, Professor and Dean, Yale School of Public Health¹

…on disability

The response to COVID-19 so far, aside from the provision of ISL interpreters at the press briefing, treatment centers don’t in any way take into consideration the needs of women with disabilities that might use such facilities” – Ekaete Judith Umoh, Board Member of the African Disability Forum²

….on wearing masks

“Walking down the street, you can circumvent people because it’s not too crowded. But when you go into the grocery store where you are going to be coming across people in constrained spaces, that’s when you definitely need to be wearing a mask. And if you’re going to a crowded location outside or you can’t avoid coming within 6 feet of people, you’d want to be wearing a face mask there as well.” — Hilary Godwin, dean of the UW School of Public Health and professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences³

…on the future of the virus

“This is a disease [COVID-19] that we will be studying for decades and decades to come, just by the very nature of its unique presentations, all the different organs it affected, how it impacted on our immune systems and what then happened because of the dysfunction of our immune systems brought on by this virus. – Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease at the University of Minnesota⁴