Coronavirus is going to hit hard in the next two-to-three weeks.

That’s the word from Steve Love, president and CEO of the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council, who spoke to the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce via Zoom Monday. The chamber also has this resource page related to the outbreak.

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The outbreak in Dallas is expected to peak around the end of April or as late as mid-May, which means most people could be confined to their homes until early June, Love says.

Here are a few more answers from Love:

Will warm, humid weather inhibit the spread of the virus? “They’d like to think that it would, but they don’t know,” Love says. “There’s more questions about this virus right now than there are answers.”

Love says he’s worked in healthcare for 45 years and remembers dealing with legionnaires’ disease, SARS, H1N1 and ebola.

“We will get through this,” he says.

Ebola was upsetting because it has about a 75% mortality rate, but it’s not terribly contagious. Love says it’s less contagious than hepatitis c. The new coronavirus is very highly contagious, but the mortality rate is not particularly high.

“A lot of people say, ‘Well 20,000 people die every year of the flu.’ Yeah, but that’s looking at it on a year,” Love says. “Look how many people have died in just three weeks. If you annualize this over 12 months, the number of deaths would far exceed 20,000, and that’s why it is so, so serious.”

Houston Methodist Hospital on Saturday was the first in the nation to attempt transfusing the blood from a patient who recovered from COVID-19 to a critically ill patient.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what happens, but that’s another potential tool that could work,” Love says.

Love says internal medicine physicians recommend getting plenty of sleep, taking vitamins and supplements and eating healthy to keep your immune system as healthy as possible.