Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne, Emergency Physician at UM Capital Region Medical Center, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the staffing shortage in hospitals handling COVID patients, testing, masking, the importance of vaccines, long COVID symptoms, and re-infection rates.

Video Transcript

KARINA MITCHELL: And welcome back. Well, US data show daily average deaths from Omicron exceeding the peak reached during the Delta surge. Here with more is Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Emergency Physician at UM Capital Regional Medical Center. Doctor, thank you so much for being here with us today.

I want to ask you, what are you seeing on the ground in Maryland? Because they just hit a record as far as death as deaths due to COVID.

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: Yes. Everyone needs to remember that although there has been some chatter about the cases of COVID actually peaking and starting to go down in some places in the country, usually our death rates lag behind that peak a few weeks. And so we still see quite a few places that are having a number of COVID-related deaths.

In my particular facility, we still are very busy. I would say that we have seen a decline in the sheer number of people who are having COVID-related problems, but we still see a number of people who are acutely ill and in those higher risk groups, specifically those who are unvaccinated, or older, or have immune compromised who are struggling. And the main issue that we're battling in my facility and several hospitals across the country is just a staffing shortage.

My family and I actually recently just recovered from COVID. So it is not an uncommon story that a lot of our facilities that are trying to take care of COVID patients are struggling because they do not have the staff to deal with the numbers that are still coming in.

KARINA MITCHELL: And then do you feel that you're getting enough local and federal support in that respect?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: I certainly think that we always could use more support. To the credit of our Governor Hogan, he did actually enact a couple of resources that were very helpful to emergency physicians like myself, specifically some testing resources that gave people an option to do drive-thru testing. And that helps to offload the amount of people who come to the ED looking for that testing when they have very mild symptoms.

And so that was, like, a really key, I think, factor in helping to decompress the emergency department in particular so we could focus taking care of sick patients, because so many people were showing up with mild symptoms who really just wanted a test, and those numbers of people were overwhelming the staff and resources that we have. So when they can be outsourced to other testing facilities, that's very helpful.

That said, I still think we have critical nursing shortages across the country. And that is something that needs to be addressed not just in Maryland, but in several states. And I see that being a problem for several months to come.

KARINA MITCHELL: Now, doctor, there's a great debate brewing over masks. New York state's masking policy just got reinstated after a judge granted a stay. I'm wondering, what is your prescription? What should people be doing?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: You know, I've said since the beginning of this pandemic that, you know, masking and doing some social distancing or basic public health measures that help to keep you and your community safe is a very small ask when you're considering something that is killing thousands of people every day. I always wear a mask, you know, as a medical provider.

And even before this pandemic, wearing a mask was something that wasn't foreign to me. And so I understand that it's probably a little easier for me to adapt to do that. But we're now two years into this pandemic, and I wish that people would consider the mask less of a nuisance and more as a very useful tool that can continue to keep their children safe in schools and people safe so that they can engage and go back to doing activities that we have not had as much access to do.

I don't see a way out of this pandemic if we're not all willing to come together and do what it takes to get these infections under control. And right now, that, to me, means continuing to mask.

KARINA MITCHELL: Doctor, I'm wondering, two years into this pandemic now, we're hearing a lot more about long COVID. What are you seeing as far as cases?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: I do see a subset of patients that are having long COVID symptoms. A lot of this is going to require some ongoing research, because we don't really, truly understand what the reason is for a long COVID. But I use it in those patients who are experiencing these symptoms as examples to others of why it is so important to vaccinate.

I know a lot of people like to kind of focus on the fact that Omicron seems less severe. But I'll emphasize that those who do have severe symptoms and those who often develop long COVID symptoms are those who are unvaccinated. So this should really just-- the fear of long COVID and the kind of unforeseen complications from getting a COVID infection, especially while unvaccinated, should encourage people who are still not vaccinated and boosted to go out and do so, because we don't know how long these symptoms will last and how they can continue to impact the lives of individuals long after their initial infection.

KARINA MITCHELL: I'm wondering, how do we get people to understand the urgency of vaccination, even at this point? You know, someone told me yesterday they received all of their vaccinations. They got boosted in November. They got Omicron in December, and then again got hit with COVID in January. It makes you wonder-- all of these vaccinations, all of these boosters, Pfizer is now working on a clinical trial for an Omicron-specific vaccine-- you how, do you make people understand that vaccines actually help when there's all of this reinfections that seem to be taking place at the moment?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: Right. I know there's a lot of data that has been coming out of the UK in particular that was showing that up to 2/3 of individuals in a particular study were COVID reinfections with Omicron-- so people who had had prior COVID infections and then got reinfected with the Omicron variant. And I don't think that's an uncommon story. I think what you have to pay attention is the other side of that data is showing that although we have seen you a huge number of COVID cases that are related to this Omicron variant, deaths in a lot of other parts of the country-- I'm sorry, the world, especially countries who are well vaccinated, such as in Portugal, are significantly lower than they have been a year ago.

So that shows that these vaccines work for the things that are most important, which is preventing hospitalizations and preventing death. So yes, maybe you will get another COVID infection and you're not 100% protected from being infected with the coronavirus by being vaccinated, but you are protected from dying from the coronavirus. And I think that's the name of the game, and that's what people should pay attention to is, do I want to take a risk in the future by not being vaccinated and putting myself in a position where I may be hospitalized, have long COVID, or potentially die from something that is preventable at this point?

KARINA MITCHELL: Yeah, it is all about downplaying that risk. All right, we will have to leave it there. Thank you so much, Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Emergency Physician at UM Capital Region Medical Center. Thank you and your colleagues for everything you are doing to help keep us safe. We are going to take--