Hello and welcome to a little bonus, Ask Cast, one which is going to deal with a story

that's in the news. Of course, which is the coronavirus and Arsenal were supposed to be playing football tonight against Manchester City.

That game has been postponed because our players came in contact with the owner of Olympiacos who tested positive for the coronavirus.

And as such, some of our players have been put in self-isolation. And as a precautionary measure, the game was postponed.

Our match against Brighton this weekend is expected to go as normal as much as normal can be normal at this particular moment in time.

But when you look at what's happening across Europe and when you look at the measures being put in place in Italy, in Spain, games being played behind closed doors, no sport at all in Italy, of course.

You know, calls for leagues to be suspended because the implications of playing behind closed doors are very big for clubs.

You know, it's going to cost them a lot of money if they don't get any spectators in there. It's a little bit worrying and it does make you think about what is going to happen in England.

What is going to happen with the Premier League season and what's going to happen to Arsenal, of course, because that is our main point of interest.

So to talk about the coronavirus and to understand it a little bit better, but also to try and figure out what is going to happen in England and English football based on what we're seeing elsewhere in Europe and across the world.

I'm joined by Dr. James McInerney, who is the head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham. Hello, James.

How are you doing Andrew? I'm all right, thanks. Let's just start on a very basic level. What is the coronavirus? And do we have any idea of like where it came from, how it started?

So the coronavirus that we're talking about, the one that causes the disease called COVID, COVID-19, it's a family of viruses and there are four of them that infect humans for that we know of now.

There's this particular one that causes COVID. There's SARS virus, which you might remember from about 19 years ago. There was a really strong outbreak of a virus that pretty much then disappeared within a few months.

There is MERS Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome virus and there's a common cold and the common cold is a coronavirus as well.

Common cold can be caused by a few things, but it can be caused by a coronavirus. So they're kind of a family. They look like a ball.

You probably all seen the graphics that they put up online and on the various news items.

It looks like a ball with some spikes sticking out of it and its particular talent in life is that it can attach to respiratory systems and cause infection.

So how is it transmitted? I mean, I think everybody understands how a common cold is transmitted. Is it pretty much the same?

It's pretty much the same. In water droplets, in coughs and every time you breathe out there's a little water droplets. So things like this, the water droplets won't go too far.

There'll be one, two meters away and then it started falling down to the ground. So it's transmitted in tiny water droplets from person to person.

Okay, what are the symptoms of this particular virus and how would somebody know?

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