Virologist Joseph Fair is an acknowledged expert in hemorrhagic fevers notably Ebola and Lassa. He is currently the Ebola Special Advisor to USAID in DRC, and Senior Fellow at Smithsonian Institute and Texas A&M University. He became critically ill with the COVID-19 disease after he flew on a plane where flight attendants did not have masks. However, he was wearing gloves and a face mask at the time. Are our eyes susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 virus then?
NBC News Asked Are Our Eyes Susceptible to SARS-CoV-2
“My best guess is the coronavirus infection came through my eyes”, he told the NBC reporter as relayed by WEB MD. Responding to a question from his hospital bed, he confirmed the wisdom of wearing eye protection. However, not everybody is totally convinced of that according to WEB MD.
Nida Sen is studying the relationship between the human eye and COVID-19. She is director of the Uveitis Clinic at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. She’s not 100% sure whether our eyes are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 or not, although she thinks it is ‘biologically plausible’.
A Researcher at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore Takes This Further
Elia Duh, MD is professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He already knows the eye conjunctiva can receive herpes simplex, and common cold-virus infections. The conjunctiva is the clear tissue covering the white of the eye, and lining the inside of the eyelid.
He believes the same chance of infection exists with the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the COVID-19 break-out. He and his team studied samples from deceased patients who did not die with coronavirus. They were looking for ACE2 receptor cells vulnerable to the virus causing COVID-19.
They found these receptors on all the samples they studied. Elia Duh’s preliminary conclusion is yes, our eyes are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. However, we cannot be sure if this actually happened at this point in time.
Related
Receptors for SARS-CoV-2 Many and Varied
Likely Cell Targets for SARS-CoV-19 Virus
Preview Image: The Eye Bulbar Conjunctiva
