Do I have common cold or Corona Virus? All of us have had viral infections sometimes in our lives. Common cold, the stomach virus and Influenza virus are some of the more common ones. The current worldwide epidemic named COVID-19 is a respiratory tract illness that is caused by a virus that belongs to the corona virus family. The official name of the virus is SARS-CoV-2. The other well-known viruses in the corona virus family are SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) viruses. The common way to diagnose infections is to culture the germs, e.g. for suspected strep throat, the doctor takes a swab from the throat and sends it to the lab for culture. The lab grows the bugs in the petri dish and report back to the doctor’s office in day or two. Unfortunately, viruses cannot be grown in the petri dish. So how do we diagnose viral infections? There are essentially two methods: One is to determine if the patient has the in...
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