Solving the COVID-19 Puzzle
In January 2020, sickness spread through Wuhan, China. At first, it seemed like a bad flu. Patients came down with a fever, then a raspy cough. But this flu was different. It spread easily. Lungs clogged, and patients found it hard to breathe. If they didn’t get extra oxygen, some got worse very suddenly. Many died.
What was this new sickness? At first, doctors thought it might be SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome). That virus had caused alarming outbreaks in Asia in past years. Was this the same germ?
What Virus Is That?
Identifying viruses is tricky. They are extremely tiny, much smaller than bacteria. There are trillions of harmless viruses all around us, all the time. So how do you find out which germ is making people sick?
When someone is sick with a virus, their body usually has lots of the bad virus in it. To find the germ, doctors first take a small blood sample from a sick person. They put the blood drop in
