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Friday, March 29, 2024

Back To School Amid The Pandemic

Credit: WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL
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Back To School Amid The Pandemic
Back To School Amid The Pandemic

We are joined by Dr. Ali Hassoun, an infectious disease specialist at Huntsville Hospital to get a better understanding of the impact of the pandemic on north Alabama.

We are joined by dr. ali hassoun , an infectious disease special list at huntsville hospital.

Thank you so much forjoining us tonight.

>> dr. hassoun: thank you for having me again.

>> najahe sherman: dr. hassoun, first and foremost from your perspective, should children go back to school next month?

>> dr. hassoun: that's really did i have question in a way for parents, for everybody, teachers as well.

In my opinion as we're seeing in the moment significant rise, increasing cases and it seems as we have not reached even the peak yet, i would say at this stage probably it's not a good idea to be face-to-face learning i know it's very difficult for everyone to decide that, but at the moment with everything going on, especially all over counties where they have continuous increase and surge, i don't think the face-to-face is a good idea.

>> najahe sherman: it seems reopening has risks no matter which way you look at it.

If the doctors and infectious disease experts like yourself could just snap your fingers and implement the ideal plan without any of the normal political loopholes, what would it look like?

>> dr. hassoun: yeah, i think what's really important in this, we see a reduction in cases.

If we don't see that, it's going to be affecting everything.

Not just the education.

It's going to affect everything in the community and how to deal with it.

So the ideal situation, and i'll mention that multiple times, i really think at the moment we're going to need to do some sort of lockdown to reduce our cases as soon as possible.

In addition to that, as we see a reduction in cases, we definitely, the implementation of the masking is very important maintaining and understanding the physical distancing, and other aspect of these guidelines and i can tell you, there is, i think, we're doing this now, not waiting, we might have a chance for the kids to go back to school.

It might not be middle of august , but it could be early september, if we start implement ing this soon.

And you know, countries, states, and cities who did that, where they saw reduction in cases, they're, you know, back to what they want to do.

And you see it all over the world.

So we need to think about doing that now.

>> najahe sherman: we want to discuss the recent spike in cases and the search for a vaccine now.

We know that you play a crucial role in monitoring remdesivir at huntsville hospital.

Is there enough remdesivir with the recent spike in hospitalizations?

>> dr. hassoun: so, you know, now there has been a shift in the acquiring remdesivir.

You probably have heard the state have run out of remdesivir supply that the federal government gave it to them and now each hospital need to buy it themselves and acquire it.

There's going to be some limitation of how much we can get.

But we are getting it.

I heard we've got a shipment, for example, today with good number of doses, for example.

But the main concern is shifting now.

In addition to how to acquire it is also the cost.

Each vial is about $500 more than that, so the five-day course is going to be ending about $3300 or $3100.

That's pretty expensive stuff when you use medication.

>> najahe sherman: it really is, especially for the people who need it.

Do we know at this point, dr. hassoun, how effective it is >> dr. hassoun: yeah, so there's definitely data been published that shown in certain set of population it's been shown it's effective.

In our population we've used it and we found some benefit in some of these.

Especially if we started early in the disease.

With certain criteria.

And fortunately we cannot start it on every patient.

One, because of the data that published.

Two, because of how much we have available.

And what we can offer to our patient.

But in the certain sense that we have criteria where to use it, we found some benefit in these patients.

>> najahe sherman: are there any side effects that we're aware of at this point?

>> dr. hassoun: so the main ones that we've seen, it is rare.

It's not that common.

But we've seen, for example, rash, some allergic reactions, liver function tests can go up in some of these patients, but it's not that common.

But we've seen it.

>> najahe sherman: in the past couple of days we've reported on encouraging news when it comes to the search for a vaccine.

Right now to your knowledge what is the latest information on the time line for a vaccine?

>> dr. hassoun: so, you know, recently the "new england journal of medicine" published some new data on phase 1 study from mad dern in a which is en encouraging in a way because they showed some benefit.

We didn't have a full data to know the -- how much clinical benefit or how much immune response.

But it's showing there is some benefit.

So there is hope.

Between these different companies, whether the one in the united states or the one in the u.k. actually, there is now -- they're talking about could it be in the fall sometime around november, december.

I think we're going to need a little bit more information.

But there's some home but there is some information hopefully around the end of the year it will be available.

>> najahe sherman: we have continued to see cases and hospitalizations go up here in north alabama.

How are we handling the recent spike in our hospital systems?

>> dr. hassoun: there's -- i can tell you there's significant pressure on the hospitals.

Bed-wise, number of patients, managing them.

There's -- you know, it's strange a lot of resources as well.

We really, you know, every day there is, whether the emergency room, management in the intensive care unit, beds availability, using, for example , p.p.e.s, medication, all these we check on it and make sure we can take care of all the patient as much as we can.

But the last several weeks and now especially in north alabama, the cases increased significantly.

There is definite worry if we're going to have significant shortage in icu beds.

And beds whether a covid patient or non-covid patient.

It is significant concern.

>> najahe sherman: we have a lot more to get to tonight, including the new mask ordinance now in effect across the state.

Stay with us.

You're watching waay-31 news at 6:00.

>> coverage you can count on.

You're watching waay 31 news.

With dan shaffer.

Najahe sherman.

Chief meteorologist kate mc kenna.

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