"What really strikes me with this is how fast the situation is changing.”

That’s how Alison Buttenheim, a public health researcher and behavioral epidemiologist at Penn’s School of Nursing, began a recent conversation about coronavirus and COVID-19. The forum was a special episode of the podcast “Amplify Nursing,” which is supported by the Pinola Fund for Innovation in Nursing and was created by the School of Nursing’s Marion Leary, the director of innovation and Angelarosa DiDonato, associate program director of the Nurse Anesthesia Program.

In the episode, Buttenheim and social epidemiologist Carolyn Cannuscio of Penn Medicine provide some up-to-date information about coronavirus and COVID-19, plus how to stop its spread and what to expect in the coming days and weeks. Below, a few takeaways.

1. Social distancing is crucial. 

“Viruses thrive in groups of people that mingle and move to new places,” Cannuscio says. “We want to deprive an infected person or that virus the opportunity of encountering a susceptible host. Right now, we are a globe filled with susceptible hosts.”