What is Coronavirus?

The Coronavirus is a type of virus. The word ' Corona ' means crown or pointy. This type of virus has spikey outer surface. Their outer cell membrane is made up of proteins or lipid layers. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause Common cold ( Rhinovirus) to more severe diseases like Middle east respiratory syndrome ( MERS) and Severe acute respiratory syndrome ( SARS ) and to the latest COVID-19. COVID-19 is similar to that of the SARS outbreak in China. 

Since the death toll of SARS and MERS weren't accounted for as a lot, and also that the virus become dormant and stopped affecting people, The work on its vaccine was stopped. 

To talk of viruses in general, There is limited amount of vaccines for different viruses, For measles, polio, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. 

And yet, we constantly need to get vaccines for the viruses. Because they constantly mutate themselves to trick the immune system and go unseen. Mutations can cause severe complications, that could lead to the vaccines and antibiotics ineffective. 

Therefore, more pressure to constantly produce new vaccines. The now COVID 19 has mutated from SARS, commonly called as SARS COV 2. This leads to increased time in finding an effective vaccine with no side effects. 

COVID-19 vs. SOAP WATER

Due the recent pandemic, All that we care about is to keep ourselves hygienic. Precautions like wearing a mask, to not touch our faces and wash ours hands several times a day. Coming to washing hands, Is soap water enough to eradicate the virus from our hands? What does soap water do to the virus? 

The Corona virus that causes COVID-19 has an outer protective Bi-lipid layer. These lipids are pin shaped molecules whose heads are attracted to water, and the tails are phobic to water. Similarly, the outer structure of the virus break through the cell membrane and hijack our cells. This is where soap comes in, A single droplet of soap has millions of molecules called amphipiles, which resemble lipids. 

The tails of amphipiles compete with the virus' bi-lipid layer for space. This causes a chaos in the outer membrane of the cell and hence can break the virus' membrane, making the whole organism crashing down. Then the amphipiles form clusters around the virus remains and become whole, which gets washed away with water.