So how long is this coronavirus thing going to last, anyway?
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By Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org
With Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards extending his statewide stay-at-home order through April 30, and with some business leaders in New Orleans expecting that city’s shutdown to last until June, it’s only natural to wonder how much longer this whole COVID-19 thing is going to last in St. Tammany Parish.
When you get right down to it, of course, nobody really knows. But St. Tammany Health System Infectious Disease Specialist Mike Hill MD said the actions of local residents are among the best ways to ensure the outbreak ends sooner rather than later.
“We’ve got a ways to go,” Hill said Thursday (April 2) in an interview on The Lake 94.7 FM. “We’re not at peak yet. We've got probably another two weeks of increasing numbers on the Northshore, so I don’t want anybody getting complacent and thinking this is over.
“We’ve still got, as the president has said – as our parish president has said and our governor – we’ve got some more days to go to get through this. So I want everyone to continue to do what they’re doing, do their part, (maintain) social isolation, and keep this virus from spreading in our community.”
Hill stressed that people could be infected and not even know it – which means that, should they go out into the community, they’ll be spreading coronavirus everywhere they go. Given how contagious it is, that’s no small thing.
By now, most people have probably heard the refrain from experts for combating it: Wash your hands, practice good cough etiquette, practice social distancing, don’t gather in large groups, go out only when necessary. That’s still the best advice to stem the spread of the disease, Hill said.
“This is a very, very easy-to-catch virus,” he said. “It is more contagious than the flu.”
And that’s not the only difference between the two, he said. There’s also the fact that coronavirus is a lot slower to reveal itself than the flu, with symptoms usually not evident until five to 10 days after infection – and sometimes as many as 14 days after infection.
“Some people think they might just have hay fever – and I’m not trying to scare everybody, because we do know there’s a lot of hay fever and sneezing going around. That doesn’t mean you have it,” Hill said. “But if you have that and then start developing fever, headaches, loss of sense of smell and taste, then I would be concerned and call your doctor.”
One thing coronavirus does have in common with the flu is that it is seasonal, thriving in the spring and again in the fall, Hill said. That means, even after the current outbreak is defeated, there’s a good possibility it could again rear its head.
“There’s a pretty good certainty that this will be back in the fall,” he said. “I think the difference will be we’ll have much better testing and I think we’ll be in much better shape to deal with it from a healthcare perspective and from a society perspective.”
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Visit STPH.org/COVID-19 for the latest information on coronavirus in St. Tammany Parish.