Doctor details how Americans can curb the spread of COVID-19

Columbia University Center for Clinical Medical Ethics Director Dr. Lydia Dugdale joins Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman to discuss what Americans can do to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: I want to shift the conversation to someone who's on the ground watching this play out right now-- Dr. Lydia Dugdale. She's Columbia University Center for Clinical Medical Ethics Director. And she joins us now via Google Hangouts.

And when we look at this, Dr. Dugdale, I know you've been watching this play out. There've been a lot of question marks right now. Not to dig into politics, but, you know, a lot of talking about whether or not it's good to open businesses back up right now on that Easter deadline that a lot of people have been looking at, President Trump's been looking at.

What's your take on the way that Americans should be thinking about this as we enter into a phase where we are seeing cases rise across the country?

LYDIA DUGDALE: Yeah, thanks, Zack. That's a great question. It's really hard to know right now what to expect. This is a novel virus. We haven't dealt with it before. We don't have a history with it.

Right now, what we can see, especially in New York City, where I am, that the virus is on the uptick. There are more and more cases every day. I think we're having about a doubling every few days of cases. So right now, it's the time to continue to play safe, to continue to-- with the social distancing recommendations, washing hands, everything that you've been hearing.

ZACK GUZMAN: And we've also been hearing about a rise in testing as well. New York State has been able to ramp that up for the time being. That's been an issue we saw at the outbreak-- the beginning of the outbreak.

My own brother tested positive in Texas. My parents waited about six days before they heard back on their tests. Luckily they were negative.

But as we look at this play out, we keep hearing from Governor Cuomo, New York state, the state that's been hit hardest here, about the stresses and the way to flatten the curve. Because there will just be factually a shortage of ventilators, when we think about more and more people coming down with COVID-19. So what are you seeing in terms of the hospital capacity, and what needs to be boosted to make sure we actually have space for all these patients?

LYDIA DUGDALE: Yeah, I have to say that I've been very impressed with the innovation that's been going on right now, and the way the medical community has really come together. People are coming out of retirement. People are joining the workforce in droves.

We are moving patients around to try to optimize space, to put COVID patients together. We're opening up new spaces to care for patients. There's also a lot of innovation around ventilators, and being able to use those more efficiently. And so all of these things are in motion.

As you note, we've increased our testing. But at this point, at least in New York City, if you've got symptoms and you're young and otherwise healthy, you can pretty much assume it's COVID and stay home.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, I guess that's been the-- kind of the guidance that we've been hearing from doctors all along, is to just be safe. And as we move into more and more states enacting shut down modes here, kind of beginning with California and New York, we're seeing it play out across the country. What more can be done here to make sure that we do flatten the curve?

Because it's coming at a time-- we're seeing Italy's-- we just got new reports of Italy's cases coming down a bit compared to what we saw a day ago, both in deaths and new cases. So we're kind of behind that in terms of where we are in our own timeline here. But what would you say to people who are thinking about maybe opening businesses back up as we move along in this?

LYDIA DUGDALE: We've all been continuing to do our essentials-- grocery shopping, getting pharmacies-- getting medications from the pharmacy. So these things are still going on. So on some level, we can't completely shut down.

The main thing is that if you're out and about, as soon as you get home, you wash your hands. We can't emphasize that enough. And the six-feet rule is actually-- it's not-- it's not arbitrary. It's when we look at people coughing or sneezing, how far the droplets spread, that's about six feet.

So these-- these guidance-- these guidelines that have been put forward have good reason. And adhering to them, even if businesses start to open slowly, really makes sense.