From an interview with
Dr. Lyndsi Cress
Southern Medical Associates

Nine-year-old Maggie Williamson and her friends had some questions about coronavirus (COVID-19).  And she took them to McLeod Primary Care Physician Dr. Lyndsi Cress.

Here is a summary of their conversation:
Maggie: Hello, I’m Maggie, and me and my friends have some questions to ask Dr. Cress about the coronavirus.
Dr. Cress: I’m Dr. Cress. I’m currently a family medicine physician at Southern Medical Associates in Loris, South Carolina.
Maggie: What is the coronavirus?
Dr. Cress: So the coronavirus is actually a broader term for a family of viruses. The virus that we’re seeing all over the news right now is COVID-19, which is actually a type of virus within the family of the coronaviruses.
Maggie: Why is it important to wash your hands?
Dr. Cress: So for that very reason, it’s important to wash our hands. I like to use the glitter analogy. You’ve ever played with glitter before? So you know when you play with glitter, it gets everywhere, right? All over your hands. Usually, if you wash your hands off enough, it’ll go away, right? But if not, if you didn’t wash your hands, and you start doing your normal activities, you touch a doorknob, you touch the counter, glitter gets everywhere, doesn’t it?
Then, mom comes through, or your sister, and then she touches the same doorknob and gets glitter all over her hands. So if you think about the coronavirus as the glitter, if we are not washing our hands, we may be spreading it around all over the place and not know it.
Maggie: Are there any medications that treat the virus?
Dr. Cress: Right now, we do not have any medications that specifically treat the virus. There are a lot of scientists and doctors working very hard around the clock to try to come up with some medicines that we can use to treat the virus, and also some vaccines to prevent it.
Maggie: Why aren’t we going to school right now?
Dr. Cress: We’re not going to school because we’re trying to practice social distancing. Social distancing is the idea that we try to keep at least six feet betweenthe next person. And we do that because sometimes people can be carriers of the virus and not know it and be totally asymptomatic, meaning they don’t have any symptoms. So if they sneeze or cough, that virus can maybe get into the air, and if someone’s next to you they could breathe in that virus and get infected.

For more information about coronavirus, click here.