What happens in your body when you contract the corona virus?
What exactly causes your body to develop pneumonia??
How could a vaccine work?
The corona must infect living cells in order to reproduce. Let’s have a closer look. Inside the virus, genetic material contains the information to make more copies of itself. A protein shell provides a hard protective enclosure for the genetic material as the virus travel between the people it infects. An outer envelope allows the virus to infect cells by merging with the cell’s outer membrane. Protecting from the envelope are spikes of protein molecules. Both a typical influenza virus and the new Corona virus use their spikes like a key to get inside a cell in your body where it takes over it’s internal machinery, repurposing it to build the components of the new viruses
When an infected person talks, coughs or sneezes, the droplets carrying the virus may land in your mouth or nose and then move into your lungs. Once inside your body, the virus comes in contact with cells in your throat, nose or lungs. One spike on the virus insert into a receptor molecule on your healthy cell membrane like a key in a lock. This action allows the virus to get inside your cell.
Next, the virus travels inside a sack made from your cell membrane to your cell’s nucleus that where your cell houses all it genetic material. Then, the viral envelope and cell membrane sack combines, allowing the the viral envelope and cell membrane sack combines, allowing the viral genetic material to leave the sack and enter the nucleus. The viral genetic material hijacks the energy and materials in your cell’s nucleus to make thousand of copies of itself. Some of the genetic material moves out of the nucleus, then attaches to the protein building parts of your cell called ribosomes. These then use information from the genetic material to make other viral proteins, such as spike protein. A packaging structure in your cell then carries the spikes in vesicles, which merge with your cell’s outer layer, the cell membrane. All the parts needed to create a new virus gather just beneath your cell’s membrane. Then, a new virus begins to butt off from the cell’s membrane.
How can you develop pneumonia symptoms?
For this, we’ll have to look into your lungs. Each lung has separate sections, called lobes. Normally, as you breathe, air moves freely through your trachea, or windpipe, then through large tubes called bronchi, though smaller tubes called bronchioles, and finally into tiny sacs called alveoli. Your airway and alveoli are flexible and springy. When you breathe in, each air sac inflates like a small balloon and when you exhale, the sacs deflate. Small blood vessels, called capillaries, then carbon dioxide from the air you breathe passes into your capillaries, then carbon dioxide from your body passes our of your capillaries into your alveoli so that your lungs can get rid of it when you exhale. Your airways catches most germs in the mucus that lines your trachea, bronchi and bronchioles
In a healthy body, hair like cilia lining the tubes constantly push the mucus and germs out of your airways where you may expel them by coughing. Normally, cells of your immune system attack viruses and germs that make it past your mucus and cilia and enter your alveoli. However, if your immune system is weaken like in case of Corona virus infection, the virus can overwhelm your immune cells and your bronchioles and alveoli becomes inflamed. Your immune system attacks the multiplying viruses . The inflammation can cause your alveoli to fill with fluid. Making it difficult for your body to get the oxygen it needs. You can develop lover pneumonia that affects one lobe of your lungs or you could have broncho pneumonia that affects many areas of both lungs.
Pneumonia may cause
- Difficult breathing
- Chest pains
- Fever and chills
- Muscle pain
It can also lead to more serious complications. Respiratory failure occurs when your breathing becomes so difficult that you need a machine called ventilator to help you breathe. These are machines that saves lives and medical device companies currently ramp up production for.
Whether you would develop these symptoms depends on a lot of factors, such as your age, whether you already have an existing condition. While all this sounds scary, the push to develop a Corona virus is moving at high speed. It is a race against time to develop a vaccine and a pandemic. Each step in vaccine development usually takes months or years. While all this takes time, stay home if you can to protect the most vulnerable and don’t forget to wash your hands for at least 20 secs and as often as possible STAY SAFE. Also read composition of the corona virus HERE