The Beltrami County Board of Commissioners heard an update to the COVID-19 virus, known as the coronavirus, during their work session yesterday.
Amy Card, the Regional Health Care Preparedness Coordinator, says a group of regional health care systems have been preparing for a virus like this for many years.
Cynthia Borgen, the county’s public health official, says the area’s health care system is robust enough to handle a large influx of patients, if the COVID-19 virus ever comes here.
There are many unknowns still to the coronavirus, because it is so new.
Flu season generally dies down as the weather gets warmer because people spend less time indoors and in close proximity to one another. There is not yet enough evidence to support that the coronavirus will behave similarly.
The Minnesota Department of Health will brief media daily, according to a release, to discuss any updates to COVID-19.
Featured photo: This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. Note the spikes that adorn the outer surface of the virus, which impart the look of a corona surrounding the virion, when viewed electron microscopically. A novel coronavirus, named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. The illness caused by this virus has been named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
