Facts in Q&A format

While a runny nose is not among the most common symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, it is among the possible symptoms.More: Coronavirus is not pneumonia – and symptoms of Covid-19 can be like common cold

The World Health Organization has not advised against it.However, some experts have recommended using paracetamol instead – provided that your doctor says it is safe for you to use. This is because paracetamol is less likely to cause side effects in people with underlying health issues.Related:…

Update (25/04/2020): The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has warned that chloroquine can cause abnormal heart rhythms.Chloroquine is being investigated as a possible treatment for Covid-19. It is not an approved cure.The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has warned people against self…

The research on which the claim of an increased risk is supposedly based, was done before the discovery of the new coronavirus and Covid-19. The National Institute for Communicable Diseases has “strongly recommended” that South Africans get flu shots to prevent flu from putting pressure on the…

The authors of an academic paper, which hasn’t been peer reviewed, claim that there is a correlation between Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination and the extent to which countries are affected by Covid-19. BCG is a tuberculosis vaccine.Professor Salim Abdool Karim, a clinical infectious…

Covid-19 can infect anyone, but some people are believed to be more likely to develop severe illness. Examples include patients who are older than 60 years and those with pre-existing medical conditions that “affect the cardiovascular, respiratory and immune system”. These conditions include lung…

No, Covid-19 is not caused by bacteria. According to the World Health Organization, Covid-19 is the disease caused by the new coronavirus – a respiratory virus that is spread by droplets from an infected person.Viruses and bacteria differ in a number of ways. Bacteria are “single-celled…

Two measures are relevant to this question: how many people someone with Covid-19 infects and how long it takes to do so.Experts have calculated the basic reproduction number (R0) of Covid-19 to estimate how contagious the disease is. R0 is the number of people an infected person is likely to…

Members of the general public have been discouraged from using surgical masks and N95 respirators amid global shortages of protective equipment for health workers. But recently updated guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) give examples in which “the general public should be…