Meghan May interviewed by the Portland Press Herald about coronavirus

The coronavirus has infected more than 6,000 people worldwide, mostly in China, causing 132 deaths.

State and local health officials are preparing in case the virus gains a stronger foothold in the United States and migrates to Maine.

Meghan May, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology and infectious disease at UNE's College of Osteopathic Medicine, is currently working on gene sequencing of the coronavirus.

She hopes to have the results published in a scholarly journal in two to three months. Sequencing is the process of determining the order of the basic genetic components and can be critical for guiding diagnosis and treatment.

May told the Portland Press Herald it is difficult to draw any conclusions yet, but scientists are learning a lot in the short time period that coronavirus has been infecting people.

“Making models and predictions at this point is a fool’s errand,” May said.

Scientists are comparing the coronavirus to the SARS outbreak in 2003, which infected 8,098 and killed 774, according to the U.S. CDC. SARS also began in China, and the United States was largely spared, with only a handful of cases.

“It seems that novel coronavirus is a little less severe than SARS, but it is very early to compare the two directly,” May told the newspaper.

May says one complicating factor with coronavirus is that it appears to be contagious before patients experience symptoms.

“When people don’t know that they are contagious because they don’t know that they’re sick, it becomes exponentially harder to control,” May commented.

By contrast, May says people start having influenza symptoms before they are contagious.