Question: How do viruses spread

Jordan Kirby answered on 8 Mar 2019: last edited 8 Mar 2019 9:22 am

Hey Jenna!
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Good question! Like all microorganisms they have ALOT of different ways to spread! Ill go over the classic ways here with a few examples of the viruses themselves (if you wanted to do more reading)
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Airborne – This migth be the best ways for disease to spread! Alot of viruses are spead in this way like the Common cold (Rhinovirus if you wanna be specifc 🙂 )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinovirus
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Waterbourne – Another really good way to spread disease is contamination by water (we all need it!), one such example of virus that uses our need to drink for its advantage is the Norovirus (which is also known as the winter vomiting bug)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norovirus
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Bloodbourne – Some viruses can be spread by coming into contact with contaminated blood, there are alot of viruses that can spread like this, the most infamous of this recently would be the Ebola Virus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease
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Sexual Transmission – Viruses can also spread via sexual transmission, the classic virus that transmits in the way would be the HIV virus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV
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Insect Vectors (fancy way of saying carrier) – Finally we have the viruses that are primarily spread by insects, this is very closely related to bloodbourne viruses (as the insects activity of drinking blood usually transmits it) but its different enough to classify its own category. An example of a virus spread by insects would be Yellow fever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_fever
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Hopefully this is what you meant if not let me know in the comments down below 🙂