Dr. David Price on how to prevent COVID-19 spread: Clean hands and do 'not touch your face, period'

Dr. David Price of Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York City gave advice on how people can prevent spreading the coronavirus.

"You may hear a little inflection in my voice like I'm emotional. It's not because I'm scared. It's actually the opposite. For the first time in a while, I'm actually not scared," Price said via video. "I work at probably the premier hospital in New York City. Our hospital is almost exclusively a COVID-19 hospital, but we're learning and we know a lot. And what I want you guys to know is that every single day we're getting better, we know more. And I am confident that the stuff I can tell you today should make you guys feel like when this comes to your community that you don't have to be scared and that you can protect your family."

Price went on say the virus is primarily transmitted by touching someone who has the virus and then touching your face.

"The ways that you get this is the transmission of the virus almost exclusively from your hands to your face, from your hands to your face and inside your eyes, into your nose or into your mouth," Price explained. "So there's a lot of talk about contact or getting it through contacts, hands to face."

The doctor also addressed the idea that the virus is transmitted by "long sustained contact" or through the air.

"There's also a small thought that it can be aerosolized, that it can kind of exist a little bit in the air," Price said. "The thought at this point is that you actually have to have very long sustained contact with someone. And I'm talking about over 15 to 30 minutes in an unprotected environment, meaning you're in a very closed room without any type of mask for you to get it that way."

"But very simply stated, the overwhelming majority of people are getting this by physically touching someone who has this disease or will develop it in the next one to two days and then touching their face," he pointed out.

"The thing that makes me smile a little bit is I actually know now that I won't get this disease because I know how to protect myself," Price said in the video.

Price offered two practical tips to keep you, your family and your friends from getting the coronavirus.

"Become a hand Nazi. Everything you know about your hands, just keep it clean and you will not get this disease," Price said. "The second thing is you have to start psychologically working on the connection between your hands and your face."

"Those two things combined is incredibly powerful and will prevent the transmission of disease in your family in 99 percent of cases, to know your hands are clean and not touch your face, period," Price added.