Coronavirus In-Depth with Dr. Ali Hassoun

Video Credit: WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL
Published on May 21, 2020 -
Coronavirus In-Depth with Dr. Ali Hassoun

Coronavirus In-Depth with Dr. Ali Hassoun

Live in florence, breken terry, waay 31 news.

>> najahe sherman: every night we're taking you deeper into the impact of the coronavirus.

And tonight we are joined by dr. alley hassoun with huntsville hospital.

Thank you for being with us this evening.

>> dr. hassoun: good evening, najahe.

Thank you for inviting me.

>> najahe sherman: dr. hassoun, governor kay ivey is teaming up with apple and google.

We'll be one of the first states across the country to use bluetooth and an app to track people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus.

Would an app like this really help us flatten the curve?

>> dr. hassoun: so, you know, similar app been planned and i think tried even in some of the european country.

And it seems it will give an idea at least of those who get exposed to the virus at one point.

And by knowing who get exposed you can try test them, tracking them and tracing them to make sure the moment they're positive they quarantine.

And by doing that, hopefully you can be able to reduce transmission, reduce exposure, and hopefully reducing infection.

I think it's a great idea.

I think in addition to that, we really need more manpower for the adph, the alabama department of public health, to be able to control this and follow this closely and cooperate with everybody in the community to get the best out of it.

>> najahe sherman: we hear a lot about contact tracing.

How effective is it really?

>> dr. hassoun: it's very effective if it's done the right way.

What it really means is the moment you know one person was infected and who he's been close to, and you contact each person and try to see and make sure they don't develop any symptoms as well as testing them.

And i can tell you this has been tried for all different type of infectious diseases, contagious ones.

Including, for example, hiv, syphilis, all of these have been shown by knowing who gets exposed and treating, tracking, diagnosing all this actually make a difference of reducing the cases.

>> najahe sherman: under this newest version of our safer at home order that governor kay ivey announced today, most businesses will be able to reopen pretty soon.

What's your perspective on this?

Is this the right move or is this too soon?

>> dr. hassoun: yeah, you know, it's really -- for us, it is worrisome because we are still seeing -- luckily here in madison hasn't been bad.

It's been really pretty good in the way of cases.

But all surrounding counties and down south of us this continue to have increase cases.

The hospital getting strained some and we know there are many admitted to these hospitals.

What's worrisome is every case you diagnose with, there is probably ten exposed, four of them might have the infection eventually.

And that's what's really going to be concerning, and we're going to watch that closely because if we open it widely like that, there's definitely going to be more cases going to happen.

And would translate into probably we're going to see it more in the hospital and unfortunately we might see more increase in death as well.

>> najahe sherman: you mentioned numbers are relatively low here in madison county.

Has there been any conversation among your colleagues on why one of the larger counties, madison county, has relatively low numbers but some of our smaller counties surrounding us have much higher numbers?

>> dr. hassoun: i think there are several factors.

One of them, probably in madison county, there's been ability to more educate population, but at the same time i think this is a community.

You know, cooperation of directions of what to do, recommendation, keeping physical distances.

In addition, i think, you know, in the other counties there's definitely more chances of crowding.

Chicken plants have been seen in some areas where unfortunately the conditions and the possibility of exposure is higher.

So there's a lot of other factors can play into that.

>> najahe sherman: new estimates from columbia university say if the united states had begun imposing the social distancing measures just one week earlier than it did in march, about 36,000 fewer people would have died from the coronavirus outbreak.

With that in mind, what do you think about alabama's response so far?

Did we shut down too late here?

>> dr. hassoun: i think we did.

We probably should have done it earlier to flatten the curve much faster.

And we should have waited a little bit longer to see significant declines over a week or two.

Unfortunately until now, most of the counties haven't seen even flattening the curve.

Most of them have seen increase in the cases.

So i think we really didn't close early but we opening earlier.

So we'll see.

Again, that's something we're going to need to watch closely and see how things are going to go.

>> najahe sherman: of course we're all hoping for the best but we'll just have to see.

So what is the latest information on testing for the virus in alabama?

Is alabama right now keeping up with the demand?

>> dr. hassoun: the testing is definitely improving.

There is more stations to test.

But at the same time, availability of this swab and reacts.

But i can tell you we haven't reached that threshold that we're very comfortable with that availability.

We still having issues where we need to decide who can be tested, prioritize that, rather than we can say everybody can because we really don't have yet all the swabs available and re-agent to test everyone.

So we really not yet there to be able to test everyone.

>> najahe sherman: we're also hearing a lot of facilities opening up and offering antibody testing but then we're also hearing that antibody testing may not be as accurate as we would like.

So what's the perspective on that?

>> dr. hassoun: so that's true.

You know, it's going to depend on what tests they are offering.

There are several tests that's available at the moment.

We need to be very cautious about interpreting the test.

One thing, which is very important, having a negative test does not mean you did not get exposed to the infection, because it might be you got tested early.

Having a positive test might mean you've been exposed but it doesn't mean you're immune to that infection.

Because a lot of us vary in the way of how we react to infection.

Some of us have good robust immunity and we can produce that good memory cells that we can fight the infection again.

But others will produce a little bit so we have a positive test but it doesn't mean we'll be able to fight it.

Another thing, which is really important, is you know, the rate of infection make a difference of interpreting a positive test.

Because if the rate of infection is very low, meaning let's say it's madison county, compared to new york city which have very high rate of infection, interpreting a positive test also will be different because, in madison county, having a positive test it might be false-positive we call it.

In new york city, no, we probably interpret it as definite real positive.

So there's a lot of things that we need to think about when we see a positive or a negative test.

>> najahe sherman: dr. hassoun, thank you so much for your insight today.

We appreciate you very much.

>>

You are here

Related videos from verified sources

Coronavirus In North Alabama: Dr. Ali Hassoun
Video credit: WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL - Published on May 15, 2020 

Coronavirus In North Alabama: In-Depth with Dr. Ali Hassoun
Video credit: WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL - Published on May 8, 2020 

Coronavirus In North Alabama:In-Depth with Dr. Ali Hassoun
Video credit: WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL - Published on May 8, 2020 

You might like