Experts say the disease's first port of call is the lungs and that it can also target the kidneys.
"When you cough, you cough up mucus and swallow it and you dump that into the acid bath we call a stomach - that's the way things normally work."
SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, also originated in China, and killed 774 people following the 2002-2003 outbreak, far less than the almost 3,000 killed by COVID-19.Professor Fielder added:"The problem we've got here, is the virus infects these cells and starts to kill them. "It can actually almost over attack, and become what we call hyperimmune, and set up a large attack which can then start to damage the healthy tissue underneath."Prof Fielder also claims the body's efforts to fight the virus can cause inflammation in the lungs, which can make breathing even more difficult.
He said:"Once the virus has got into the pneumonic state in the lungs, it can start causing problems in the air sacs in the blood vessels in your lungs - commonly wrapped around the almost broccoli shaped organs in the lungs, called the alveoli."These are really important in normal breathing to help the body exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen under normal breathing, and these are very delicate, and can get damaged and limit your capability of oxygenating blood.
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