Doctors and other health-care workers fighting the coronavirus outbreak in China don't have any specific treatments to use against this new virus. Normally, when someone is infected with a respiratory virus, the patient's immune system kicks in to fight off and kill the virus. But data from early cases in China suggest that the culprit in people who were severely sickened in the coronavirus outbreak is often an overactive immune response. "You need your immune response to still be functional because you want your immune response to kill the virus," Miller said. When there's a massive immune response, the patient can suffer more damage than healing, and problems such as breathing difficulties can be exacerbated.

Source: CBC News February 12, 2020 09:01 UTC