Have questions about the coronavirus? Get answers in this Q&A video
The coronavirus outbreak continues to spread. As of Thursday, Chinese officials confirmed more than 6,000 cases, with more than 130 deaths, according to The New York Times.
World Health Organization officials, who decided last week not to declare the outbreak a public health emergency, planned to again consider doing so Thursday, its director general said.
Foreign governments continue to pull their citizens out of Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began. A plane of Americans landed in Southern California on Thursday.
And public health departments in communities around the country have been inundated with calls from concerned residents.
What does any of this mean to you? How much of a danger is the coronavirus to people who live in the United States, and what can you do to protect yourself from infection?
We want to offer you the opportunity to ask questions and get answers from Dr. ChrisAnna Mink, who is serving as children’s health reporter of The Modesto Bee and McClatchy Newspapers under the Report for America program, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project.
Mink is a pediatric infectious disease specialist, as well as a clinical professor of pediatrics at UCLA. She said she has gotten numerous text messages from her friends and family with questions about the coronavirus and what it could mean to them.
We want to offer our readers the chance to ask their own questions, and we will be producing a live video at 10 a.m. Friday.
Mink cautions that she will be giving out general information. As always, people seeking medical advice for specific issues should talk to their medical providers.
The video will be shown on The Modesto Bee’s YouTube channel, and there will be links to it from our websites.
You can tune in and ask questions then, or email them in advance to local@modbee.com.
This video will be available for viewing on all of McClatchy’s California websites, including The Sacramento Bee, The Fresno Bee, Merced Sun-Star and San Luis Obispo Tribune. We will also update this story with the link to the live video on Friday.
Help us cover your community through The Modesto Bee’s partnership with Report For America. Contribute now to help fund ChrisAnna Mink’s important health coverage.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Have questions about the coronavirus? Get answers in this Q&A video."
