Niles native helps name coronavirus, says this could have been prevented
It's not every day you get the opportunity to be on a global committee to name a virus, but for Niles native Dr. Benjamin Neuman, the naming of this virus would be a bit different.
"I got onto the committee when I had a couple of corona related viruses that I discovered and they needed to be named and there was no one that was looking at one entire section of corona like viruses and so they said do you want to do it, and I said sure," says Dr. Neuman.
After about 25 years of studying viruses, Neuman says there were things that surprised him about this Coronavirus, which he named SARS CoV-2.
"It's got about thirty genes that are about the same genes that you would find in regular SARS Coronavirus so very similar, very familiar. The things that are different about it, it seems to transmit between humans much better than the original SARS," he said.
Another thing that surprised Neuman, is the way that we handled the spread of COVID-19.
It's something he says was handled poorly.
"For a long time I thought this shouldn't be a problem, we have relatively strong health officials we have lots of labs that are capable of doing testing. I think where we got off to a slow start was not using the test that was validated over in Germany."
As the country begins to open back up, Neuman says there's a safe way for us to go about our daily lives and not continue to ramp up the spread of the virus and that all starts with wearing masks.
"We know there are receptors so you can catch the virus in your eyes and also in your nose and mouth so the mask is blocking all of those droplets coming out and going in at two of those sources."
Neuman says methods like wearing masks and the rise of contact tracing will be crucial to keeping businesses open and stopping the spread of the virus into the future.
