Coronavirus: Moving Toward Safety With Empowering Knowledge

— Young people and adults alike are bombarded with information about COVID-19 and they need to know how to tell science-based facts from fiction. To beat this pandemic, they need to understand the ways in which the virus spreads and prevent it from proliferating. Because SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is host dependent and must attach to and live inside the cells of other organisms to survive, it's possible to outsmart and inactivate the virus by first understanding the ways in which it spreads and then by engaging in measures to avoid, inactivate, and suppress its spread.     Asymptomatic infections contribute to more than 50 percent of the spread of COVID-19, making transmission hard to control. More alarmingly, "recent increases in COVID-19 associated hospitalization rates and the potential for severe disease in adolescents reinforce the importance of prevention strategies," writes the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Giving both young people and adults the knowledge for how to recognize how the virus spreads and how to suppress it through individual actions can help thwart infection of the insidious virus. Through understanding and individual responsibility, young people can shield themselves from the grip of the pandemic and move confidently toward a safe return to everyday life.      Valeria Teles interviews Sabbithry Persad — the author of " What Is Coronavirus?: How It Infects, How It Spreads, and How to Stay Safe"   Sabbithry Persad is a writer who tackles issues we face in the global community. Persad is the author of the Garbology Kids® waste management series for children, which includes Where Do Recyclable Materials Go?, Operation: Reuse It!, and We Can Reduce: Precycle It! She is the founder of Firewater Media Group and Green Solutions Magazine.     Meet Sabbithry at firewatermediagroup.com