Taking precautions: South Mississippi prepares for the Coronavirus

The Coronavirus is hitting a little closer to home with recent confirmed cases in Florida and as Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards says he expects to eventually see cases in his state, forming a task force in preparation. How is South Mississippi preparing?

It’s that time of year again. Like every other flu season, Dr. Ragula is seeing a somewhat steady stream of patients. “This flu season has been manageable, compared to other flu seasons. What I mean by that is basically volume through doctor’s offices and emergency departments. It’s always a high volume period. This year it didn’t seem to hit the numbers we usually see.”

Something else Dr. Ragula hopes not to see: a patient with the Coronavirus. “This is an image of the virus, and with different magnification, the closer in you get, the more you’ll see that the bumps over top of the circular part of the virus appear like a crown. That’s where the terminology coronavirus comes from. Corona is Latin for crown.”

The virus, invisible to the naked eye, has spread panic globally. Symptoms include coughing, congestion, your typical cold or flu-like symptoms, but Dr. Ragula has seen no immediate need to test patients right off for Coronavirus. “If there’s a complication from a viral illness, then we may jump the level and start taking a closer look to see what our possibilities could be to help take a patient through a hard time, but for general public testing, no.”

And while two cases of Coronavirus have been confirmed in Florida, as of Monday afternoon, there have been no confirmed cases in Mississippi, but hospitals and clinics like this one in Woolmarket do have testing kits. “We don’t have a vaccine for it.”

But a solution could be on the way. Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the national task force, says clinical trials on a vaccine are set to get underway in about six weeks.