Student Worksheet

Communicating Clearly About COVID-19 - Activity Instructions

Students will...

You will comprehend information from a news article and use this to formulate your own feelings and views
You will plan and create an informative brochure on COVID-19.

Students can...

You can write an informative text that explains different aspects of COVID-19 including symptoms, high-risk groups, how it is contracted and how it is different from influenza
You can select language and maintain a tone appropriate for your audience
You can organise your ideas strategically through a planning process.

READ THE CONVERSATION ARTICLE BELOW

Coronavirus: how long does it take to get sick? How infectious is it? Will you always have a fever? COVID-19 basics explained

How does it spread?

COVID-19 is transmitted through droplets generated via coughing and sneezing.

This means it can spread during close contact between an infected and uninfected person, when it’s inhaled, or enters the body via the eyes, mouth or nose.

Infection can also occur when an uninfected person touches a contaminated surface.

What are the symptoms?

COVID-19 causes similar symptoms to the flu. Fever is the most common symptom, occurring in almost 88% of cases, while a dry cough is the next most common, affecting almost 68% of those with the virus.

Data from 55,000 cases in China also show other symptoms can include:

fatigue, in 38% of cases
producing sputum or phlegm, 33%
shortness of breath, 19%
sore throat, 14%
headache, 14%.

Unlike other coronaviruses that cause the common cold, COVID-19 is hardly ever associated with a stuffy nose. This is seen in just 5% of cases.

Diarrhoea is also uncommon, affecting only 4% with the virus.

The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Can I be infected if I don’t have a fever?

Yes, you can still have coronavirus if you don’t have a fever. This occurs in about 12% of cases.

How long does it take to get sick?

The incubation is the period from when you’re infected to when you become sick. For COVID-19, the range is 1-14 days, with an average incubation period of 5-6 days.

How sick do people usually get?

Most people who get sick (80%) have a mild illness which rarely involves needing to go to hospital. They recover after about two weeks.

But just over 20% of people sick with COVID-19 will need to be hospitalised for severe difficulties with breathing.

Of the 20% who need to be hospitalised, 6% become critically ill with either respiratory failure (where you can’t get enough oxygen from your lungs into your blood), septic shock, and/or multiple organ failure. These people are likely to require admission to an intensive care unit.

It appears to take about one week to become severely ill after getting symptoms.

How often do people die of it?

The case fatality rate refers to the number of deaths among those who have tested positive for coronavirus. Globally, the case fatality rate today stands at 4%.

But this rate varies country to country and even within countries. These variations may partially be explained by whether hospitals has been overwhelmed or not.

Read more: How does coronavirus kill?

The case fatality rate in Wuhan was 5.8% (although one model says it may be lower at 1.4%). In the rest of China, it was at 0.7%.

Similarly in Europe, Italy’s case fatality rate is (8.3%), greatly surpassing that of Germany (0.2%).

However the case fatality rate only includes people who are tested and confirmed as having the virus.

Some modelling estimates suggest that if you calculated the number of deaths from the total number of cases (those confirmed with tests and those that went undetected) the proportion of people who die from coronavirus might be more like 1%.

Read more: The coronavirus looks less deadly than first reported, but it's definitely not 'just a flu'

Who is most at risk of dying?

People aged over 60 years with underlying health problems are at highest risk of severe disease and death.

For people aged 60-69, 3.6% of those who are infected will die from COVID-19. This rises to 8% for for 70-79 year olds and 14.8% for those over 80.

Among people under 50 years, just 0.2-0.4% will die from the disease and this rises to 1.3% for 50-59 year olds.

Read more: Why are older people more at risk of coronavirus?

How infectious is it, and how does that compare with the flu?

COVID-19 and influenza are probably fairly similarly infections.

A single ill person with COVID-19 can infect more people than a single ill person with influenza. COVID-19 has a higher “reproduction number” of 2.0-2.5. This means one person will infect, on average, 2 to 2.5 people.

Seasonal influenza has a reproduction number of about 1.28, meaning one person will infect, on average, between one and two people.

But this is balanced by influenza’s ability to infect more quickly. It takes, on average, 3 days to become sick with the flu, but you can still transmit it before symptoms emerge.

It takes 5-6 days to become sick with COVID-19. We still don’t know if you can be infectious before getting coronavirus symptoms, but it doesn’t seem to be a major driver of transmission.

So influenza can spread faster than COVID-19.

The case fatality rate of COVID-19 is higher than that of seasonal influenza (4% versus 0.1%), although as noted above, the true fatality of COVID-19 is still not clear.

Read more: The 'dreaded duo': Australia will likely hit a peak in coronavirus cases around flu season

Can you be reinfected?

It’s too early to know if someone infected with COVID-19 can get it again.

On the basis of what we understand about other coronaviruses, it is likely that infection will give you long-term immunity. But it’s unclear whether that will mean one year, two years or lifelong immunity.

Still have more questions? We might have you covered in this video. (https://youtu.be/T13Js2bMF_U)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Part A: Find The Answers

Step 1.

Use a dictionary or an online dictionary such as: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ to find the definitions of the following persuasive techniques. Record your answers in the table below.

Step 2.

Complete the following activities about the article.

Summarise the article in 30 words or less.
Describe the key messages of this article.
Using the information in the article, complete the table below about the differences between COVID-19 and influenza. You will find the information you need in the section titled, ‘How infectious is it, and how does that compare with the flu?’
.

Step 3.

Conduct some further research and answer the following questions.

1. What have been some of the regulations put in place to keep people safe in the state that you live in?

2. How can people contract COVID-19?

3. Have you learned any new skills whilst you have been staying at home? List them below.

Part B: Putting It All Together

Step 1.

Use the information in the article to complete the planning template below.

Audience: The audience for this brochure is teenagers (your classmates, friends)

Purpose: The brochure is an information brochure that will ensure that your audience knows about COVID-19 (coronavirus) and symptoms associated with it.

Step 2.

Using your planning template, you can now go ahead and create your information brochure on coronavirus titled, Understanding and Coping with COVID-19’.

Each of the sections completed in the planning document can be a section or heading in your brochure.

To complete this activity, you could use a template found in a program such as Microsoft Word or you could design this using one of the templates found at: https://www.canva.com/templates/search/brochures/

Step 3.

Edit your work. Read back through the brochure you have just written and check for each of the following things:

Have you included a balanced mix of images and text?
Have you used bold, stylish heading that stand out?
Have you used language relevant to your audience?
Can you change or strengthen any key words using a thesaurus?
Have you included all of the sections from your planning template?

Start A Conversation

Connect and collaborate with classmates.

1. Send your brochure to a classmate. Have them read your brochure and add any suggestions or changes.

Taking It Further

Ask a teacher if you they can publish your brochure at your school through one of the following options:

School LMS e.g. Compass
School newsletter
School Facebook page

Communicating Clearly About COVID-19

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