WAAY 31 is joined by infectious disease specialist Dr. Zohra Chaudhry to discuss present coronavirus issues such as if high school football is safe and concerns of the coming flu season.
Coronavirus cases per day over the past two weeks.
We are joined now by dr. zohra chaudhry, an infectious disease specialist list at huntsville hospital.
>> dan shaffer: thanks for being with us tonight, doctor.
>> dr. chaudhry: thank you so much for doctoring me.
>> dan shaffer: dr. chaudhry, we'll start with this.
When students return to the classroom we learned about positive coronavirus cases here in there.
But now it's almost as though the floodgates have opened up.
Is this a worrisome sign of what's to come as the the school year goes on.
>> dr. chaudhry: it certainly is and that's why many people were promoting for the school to remain closed and learning is switched more to an online for mat.
And i know it's hard and then, you know, the other concern was that people, if they're going to be going back to school, that they implement regular testing, students avoid mass gatherings, social distancing, wearing masks and in classrooms you're appropriately spaced out to prevent what is happening now.
>> najahe sherman: dr. chaudhry, we know at least three high school football games in madison county will forfeit games due to the coronavirus.
In your expert opinion should these students be on the field at all?
>> dr. chaudhry: you know, if there is a safer way that can be implemented like they are trying to do for our national teams with regular testing before every game, then they can certainly be on the -- on the ground.
But if there's no regular testing and then they're just out there, then you're not just putting their lives at risk but also other people, their families, other students, and, you know.
So forth.
>> dan shaffer: and just to follow up, do you feel like those precautions are not being implemented to the full extent they should be?
>> dr. chaudhry: it's hard to say because every academic institution differs in how they're doing it.
The general consensus is they should be testing their players before the game.
>> mr. birdwell: what's the talk in the halls of the hospital regarding the flu and the coronavirus happening at the same time?
Does this pose more of a risk to students and what's your best advice?
>> dr. chaudhry: absolutely.
So, you know, we do have some prelim data that's available from influenza season that we saw in our southern hemisphere like australia, south american and south africa and cdc had issued a report about a week ago and surprisingly they saw a very low influenza season, very low activity which tells us that it's probably all these community mitigation measures that we're taking including avoiding large gatherings and school closures, wearing a mask.
So if all these measures are continued to be implemented throughout fall so we may not see an aggressive flu season, but we also know that flu itself has a high mortality and covid itself also has a high mortality so if people were to get both, which we would call co-ex if -- co-infection we could see a wos outcome to these people.
The best thing is to obviously get a flu vaccine so you at least have a milder flu illness and continue to be safe out there, wearing masks and avoid large gatherings.
>> najahe sherman: dr. chaudhry, working in the hospital system, what are the types of discussion that you and your colleagues are having right now.
How concerned are you about this , as you mentioned these two viruses with similar symptoms colliding at the same time?
>> dr. chaudhry: i mean, we are certainly concerned because both of these viruses are respiratory viruses and can be aggressive in terms of causing respiratory failure, even in younger people.
So there's always this concern once people start coming in, how are we going to treat these people because even with covid we don't have a good treatment as of today.
With influenza we do have some drugs out there but they're still not the best ones.
And we know with influenza the best treatment has been prevention so far.
So it's a little -- it's a little premature to say what's going to happen, but just looking at the numbers and the disease pathologies we can expect adverse outcome.
>> dan shaffer: a lot more to discuss with dr. chaudhry tonight including who should -- who you should trust during this difficult time.
>> najahe sherman:
WAAY 31 is joined by infectious disease specialist Dr. Zohra Chaudhry to discuss present coronavirus issues such as how current..