“People often compare the flu to COVID-19, but we have a vaccine to prevent and medications to treat the flu. Right now, we have no medications or vaccine for COVID-19," says Dr.
Manisha Juthani, MD, a Yale Medicine infectious disease specialist.
Researchers still aren't sure how contagious COVID-19 is compared to other viruses, but it appears to spread more rapidly than the flu.
“In Public health we measure something called the R0 (pronounced 'R-naught') which is the average number of people infected by a person with the virus,” says Dr Jeremy Brown, Director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health. He goes on to explain that the R0 for influenza is about 1.3, meaning about 1.3 people get the virus from every ten who have the infection. Measles, on the other hand, is extremely contagious, with an R0 of 12-18. “We are still not sure what the R0 is for coronavirus, but it appears to be about 2.0, which is about the same as SARS,” Dr. Brown continues. “These are early estimates though and are likely to change as we get better data.”
Another thing that makes the coronavirus a bit more dangerous? That there are so many unknowns attached to it—unlike the flu which has been studied for decades. "Despite the morbidity and mortality with influenza, there's a certainty … of seasonal flu. I can tell you all, guaranteed, that as we get into March and April, the flu cases are going to go down. You could predict pretty accurately what the range of the mortality is and the hospitalizations [will be]," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a
White House press conference on Jan. 31. "The issue now with [COVID-19] is that there's a lot of unknowns."
