Thursday Block 2

Thursday block 2

>> regardless of how strong you think your constitution, wearing a mask has become widely mandatory, and it has proven to help slow the spread of coronavirus, but a recent discovery about thing link between blood type and infections has some people more at ease than others, and has stirred debate in the process.

Here to help us get a handle on it is dr. eric micer, and he is a professor of infection at usc.

And we are seeing lower rate of infection in south carolina, or a slowdown, would you agree with that information?

And how can you explain the results if that is in fact true?

>> yeah, i think the rates at which the number of cases have increased as slowed a little bit lately, but the absolute number or the total number of cases each day still remains quite high compared to a month ago.

So there's pretty good he had is that wearing a mask helps to reduce the spread of infection between people.

And it's great that we have had recommendations about that for our community and our society.

Certain mask use is not uniform across our state.

And there's still room to do that more often, and to help in the companied fight against infection.

>> let's talk about the link between blood type and covid-19.

We read a recent study that shows is that people with an o type blood are less susceptible to being infected as opposed to someone with an a type blood.

So can you tell us more about the study and what it shows?

>> sure, researchers and had multiple countries have conducted studies like this, and we now have data from china and the united states in that regard.

The way these studies work, we typically compare a group of people who have covid-19 in the hospital to a group of people in the hospital who don't have covid infection or are in the community and they ask the question of if blood type might risk the infection or not, and so far the data from different countries has been mixed and i think there are a couple of key points for your viewers to know.

Number one, if you are in the hospital with covid infection, thus far, there's not much evidence to suggest that your blood type is going to mean that you get really sick or you get better and go home.

We still need more data in that setting.

The other thing that people look at, does your blood type influence your risk of getting it in ther first place?

There's suggestion that certain blood types could risk infection, and i caution that the is it data is still preliminary, and if it's true, it's likely to be one of the factors amongst had others that is determine a person's risk of infection.

>> so if you are walking around and say you have an o type blood, you should not feel secure in thinking i will never catch it.

It's still possible is what you're saying.

>> the studies are pretty consistent that people with type o blood might potentially have a slightly lower risk of infection, and however, the impacts or the magnitude of the effect may not be that large, and certainly people of any blood type have the potential to be infected and be very sick from this infection.

>> what are the other ways that covid can manifest itself in a patient, because we have heard it's a respiratory virus, guests of ours on the show were told they had it.

But it showed up ditch.

>> yes, you're absolutely right.

And we're learning more and more about different ways that the infection can present to different people.

Some have is symptoms, and some have almost none at all.

Fever and cough are classic symptoms, and other people have loss of taste or smell as their main symptom.

And other people can have stomach is problems, d diarrhear abdominal pape, and it can cause different people to file different ways.

Final question, doctor.

What is some of the lasting damage that covid can have on patients.

>> the potential of health even after the ricer is long gone and they're recovering.

We're in the initial it stages of that work, but sometimes when people have symptoms weeks or months after they recover from the virus, so as time goes on.

We're going to learn more about what the effects may be.

>> thank you for taking the time to talk to us, and you've given