An apt scene from the sitcom Scrubs has gone viral on social media this week, showing why social distancing is so important during the coronavirus pandemic.
With more and more people around the world choosing to retreat into the comfort of their own homes and self-isolate during the global pandemic, the scene, which stems from the season five episode, My Cabbage, has been widely shared online. Many are citing it as a pertinent example of why quarantine is so vital to public health when a contagious disease is on the loose.
Here's how to spot the early warning signs of coronavirus:The scene in question, which you can check out below, shows a mom holding a tissue over her kid's nose, with the germs spreading from the snotty hankie to her hand.
The germs then jump from the mother’s hand to a doctor when she greets him, before passing it over to another woman through a touch on the shoulder. Before long, the disease has reached an elderly woman, who ends up covered in germs and seriously unwell.
A report from the World Health Organization has now declared that the COVID-19 is a pandemic, writing in a statement:
"WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic."
The statement continued: "Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death."
At the time of writing, there have now been more than 171,115 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across 114 countries worldwide, and a total of 6,685 deaths.