WAAY 31 is joined once more by Huntsville Hospital disease specialist Dr. Ali Hassoun to discuss present coronavirus issues such as if we’re continuing to “flatten the curve”, the state of testing at Huntsville Hospital, and how accurate the death toll is.
>> najahe sherman: we are back with dr. ali hassoun an infectious disease specialist at huntsville hospital.
>> dan shaffer: there are almost 100 fewer patients in the system right now.
Is that a number you would expect, more or less?
>> dr. hassoun: so we definitely happy about that in a way because it went down in compared to july.
But what we've noticed now, dan, is it actually went down and now it's flat and a little bit of increase coming up with it.
We're seeing a little bit more, but it's flat enough.
So it is something that we've been looking for for cases to go down.
But we were hoping these cases continue to go down.
I think part of it is as the schools and the sport keep going on, we probably going to stick with these numbers.
I hope not more than that.
As long as people follow the guideline.
And there's always better to have less and less cases, hopefully.
>> dan shaffer: sure.
>> najahe sherman: the number of people getting tested for coronavirus in the hospital system has been around 400 during the past week, not counting labor day.
Hospital ceo david spillers says officials use this number to get a better idea of how many people are sick.
So how should people look at this number now when we saw testing numbers average above 1 000 during points in july?
<!0> >> dr. hassoun: and again, i think it's a good sign of less people needing to be tested.
But i mentioned that before as well.
I've seen people don't want to be tested to know their results.
So it could be part of it contributing as well.
Definitely or hopefully people following the guideline if they're sick they come to be tested.
So if these numbers are true or going down, these are good sign for us.
We really want less and less because if you compare it to other state or other countries, they have much less people tested because the spread of infection is less so the numbers of infection is less as well.
>> dan shaffer: it's an unpleasant subject but let's talk about the number of deaths.
How accurate is the death toll, in your opinion?
Some say wiewr undercounting, some say we're overcounting because of comorbidityties.
What are your thoughts on that?
>> dr. hassoun: in my opinion i think we're understood counting the numbers because ub forptly, and it's been seen actually in new york, there was a lot of cases of people who died from coronavirus but they died at their home when there was a widespread infection and when there was a panic, you know, the hospitals was full, the i.c.u.
Was full, so a lot of people didn't want to come to the hospital.
So definitely a lot of these patients had complication from the carona but they didn't come to the hospital but it got to be found in autopsies and stuff.
I really think it's undercounted because a lot of this is people is not coming when it get panicky.
That's why i'm worried about the winter, if something happened like that.
>> najahe sherman: there's still a lot of questions about the future and the coronavirus and most everyone has their own guess when it all might be over, if ever.
So why do you see us in terms of coronavirus impact for the the start of the new year?
>> dr. hassoun: yeah, my prediction is -- and you know, i want to say one thing is we chose, as a community, to live with the virus rather than control it and get rid of the virus.
And because of that, i think we're going to continue seeing this for at least six months to nine months, unfortunately.
>> dan shaffer: wow.
>> dr. hassoun: because, you know, the expectation is we were hoping this is going to go down, down and we control it where we only have clusters of it.
Unfortunately we're still seeing infection in the community continuing.
And some people is just not following these guideline.
So we probably are going to continue six to nine month with this, if we don't do a better job in controlling this.
So in terms of your professional eyes do you like what you're seeing in terms of masking and social distancing and how important is it for people to do that?
>> dr. hassoun: yeah, i think it definitely got better in compared to what we had in may and june.
But i think we're able to do better and better than what we're doing at the moment.
Because where you go out and see see people in stadium, where you see people in stores, some of them really not wearing mask and some of them don't care much about physical distancing.
And that's what's concerning in there.
Where, you know, now you open the schools, you can have more exposures and you're not going to be able to control it well.
And that's the main issue.
I hope people listen and follow the guideline.
It's not that difficult.
>> dan shaffer: dr. ali hassoun, infectious disease special list at huntsville hospital.
>> najahe sherman: as always, thank you so
WAAY 31 is joined once more by Huntsville Hospital disease specialist Dr. Ali Hassoun to discuss present coronavirus issues such as..
