WAAY 31 is joined once more by Huntsville Hospital disease specialist Dr. Ali Hassoun to discuss present coronavirus issues such as schools reopening, the coming “twin-demic”, and the ongoing search for a vaccine.
Day combined over the last two weeks.
>> najahe sherman: we are joined now from dr. ali hassoun, the infectious disease specialist at huntsville hospital.
>> dan shaffer: thanks again for being with us tonight, dr. hassoun.
>> dr. hassoun: thank you, dan.
>> dan shaffer: as we just mentioned huntsville city schools and madison county schools are getting ready to head back to the classroom.
Madison city students already did that.
Madison county is averaging 44 new cases over the past week.
So in your opinion is it safe for students to return right now ?
>> dr. hassoun: so i'm still of the opinion we hope to see less cases but i would encourage everyone, whoever is starting to go to school, the school themselves are going to need to make sure reduce occupancy, keeping physical distancing, masking, hand hygiene, and hopefully we can cut down.
I'm really worried, now we putting student in school and, you know, fall is coming soon in october where the weather change and if the flu and other viral infection is going to come up.
We're going to need to see how that is going to go.
Shers this week the american academy of pediatrics and the children's hospital association said more than 500,000 children in the u.s. were diagnosed with the virus since the pandemic began.
We also saw a recent 16% increase in child cases.
We know children aren't at high of risk for severe cases, but how concerning is this with children heading back to school?
>> dr. hassoun: yeah, so as expected, and it's been published now and known, kids can get infected as much as adults.
They do have milder symptom, but some of them, even though rare but they can get sick.
So i'm expecting we probably can see more transmission.
And we've sewn it already when they opened the school in other counties.
We've seen it can get transmitted between the kids.
But at the same time, it get to teachers and what we're not counting is really their families, the parents, the grandparents.
We're not tracking when we open the schools.
And that's definitely concerning there.
>> dan shaffer: the white house coronavirus task force coordinator dr. debra birks today said anyone who socialized closely with others over this last labor day holiday, especially without a mask, should get tested.
What are you hearing about how we did and are you expecting another spike?
>> dr. hassoun: so the spike, dan, it takes about two weeks or 10 to 14 days from the holiday time.
So we're probably too soon to judge on that.
We've hoped that people have used as much common sense to use for the physical distancing and masking.
It's really going to be another week or ten days until we figure out how this is going to go.
You know, to get everybody tested because they didn't do the physical distancing, at the moment we probably have some testing available but it takes time to get these results.
I really think they should watch for symptoms, they get informed of everybody been positive they get exposed to so they quarantine and get to be tested sooner than later.
>> najahe sherman: dr. hassoun, let's talk about a coronavirus vaccine.
This week pharmaceutical company astra zeneca put its phase 3 clinical trials on hold after a person came down with an illness.
And so how big of a setback is that in the search for a vaccine >> dr. hassoun: well, you know, and again we've talked concerning vaccine safety and efficacy.
So this is not surprising in the way of you're going to see this come up where they're going to need to hold the trial or put it on kind of pause till they know if that -- what we call serious adverse event is related to the vaccine or is it something else that that specific patient had.
This can take a few weeks, but we're want to know safety issues so if this come up, it definitely important to know.
So on follow-up with it, whether this get published with the astra zeneca one or other ones, i hope everybody going to be transparent about safety issues.
So, you know, the public will trust the vaccine.
>> dan shaffer: along those lines, there's a lot of talk about that time line for the vaccine.
President trump has said we can expect good news soon.
The ceo of pfizer says he expects results by the end of next month.
How important is it not to rush something like this?
>> dr. hassoun: it's very, very important not to rush in this because, you know, we hope they're going to be enrolling thousands and thousands of patients rather than hundreds because from the hundreds you might not get enough information data-wise as well as safety-wise so i hope they're not going to rush into it and enrolling just only few hundreds and give us data.
Again, i hope they're going to send us more information rather than the f.d.a.
Approve it as a e.u.a.
We really want something that all physician public can have access to it, to make their own judgment and to make their own discussion group to know if this is useful, effective, and safe.
>> najahe sherman: two local groups, north alabama research and alabama affiliated research were enrolling volunteers for the pfizer trial.
We know one issue these trials are having all across the country really is not enough minority volunteers.
Can you walk us through why it's important to test different race s and ethnicities and what it could mean for these trials if they don't get enough minorities?
>> dr. hassoun: so in general, in any research studies, specifically drugs or vaccine, we want to enroll different race s, different groups, different ages, female, male because in each race there's certain type of genetics they have they might react differently.
Or they might have side effect specific for them.
Or it could be efficacious or not as efficacious in compared to other group.
So it's very important to have a whole groups involved in this.
So when you make judgment on ef efficacy and safety, you're going to be able to make it wise ly and you know it included all different group rather than just one group.
>> dan shaffer: dr. hassoun, you mentioned this a moment ago, i want to revisit this though.
While we await a vaccine health officials are worried about this upcoming flu season, during the pandemic, a one, two punch as it were.
What can we expect in the coming months with two viruses at a time?
>> dr. hassoun: and i take it in two different path.
One path, if our community take the right way of prevention, masking, physical distancing, we probably going to be able to cut down on covid as well as we can cut down on the flu and other respiratory viruses.
The other path is if the community doesn't follow these guidelines, doesn't want to keep up with masking and other things , then it's going to be a major problem where you can see significant effect on the hospitals, where you can see i.
C.u.s and hospital will be full.
Really sick patients.
And not only that, because you cannot differentiate easily between flu virus and the covid until you get the results of the test, that can take 24, 48 hours , you probably are going to be confusing to public as well as health care professional.
So it can be a disaster if you go to the second path.
>> najahe sherman: we have a lot more to discuss with dr. hassoun , including the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus across north alabama.
WAAY 31 is joined once more by Huntsville Hospital disease specialist Dr. Ali Hassoun to discuss present coronavirus issues such as..
