Doctor on holiday travel amid COVID-19: ‘every state is in dire straights, it’s why officials want people to stay home’
Dr. Payal Patel, Infectious Diseases Physician and University of Michigan Teaching Faculty Physician, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss holiday travel amid COVID-19.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: We're going to stick with this. And for more on that, we want to bring in Dr. Payal Patel. She's an infectious disease physician and teaching faculty physician with the University of Michigan. And Dr. Patel, it's great to have you on the program.
Let's just start with what we just heard on Anjalee end on, and that, of course, is the Thanksgiving holiday travel numbers. TSA saying that just around 3 million people travelled from Friday through Sunday. When you take a look at those types of numbers, are we going to be in a more serious situation this time next week because of the number of people that are traveling for the holiday weekend?
PAYAL PATEL: Yeah. I mean, I think looking at the entire country, every state is already kind of in dire straits. And that was one of the reasons that public health officials were hoping that more Americans would try to stay home this holiday season. I mean, I think when we think about travel for the holidays, it's not just going through the airport, right? It's going to someone else's house, often eating with your mask off, indoors for hours with family, often with alcohol, and just trying to have a good time.
That's when you forget about a lot of the precautions that we all have been taking. And many people haven't quarantined for 14 days or so before traveling. So we're really worried in the medicine community that we are going to continue to see cases rising up.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Dr. Patel, I think a lot of us would benefit from a kind of refresher of that which we already know, given what the CDC is considering with self-quarantine guidelines, potential changes. But that refresher for us, what, if you are exposed to coronavirus and you do develop illness, because a lot of people won't even know they've ever had it, right? What percentage will never know they've never had it? And for those who do develop something, what is the period when you start to-- is it two, three, four days when you'll start to see symptoms?
PAYAL PATEL: Yeah, that's a great question. How many people won't know they ever had it, it's actually unknown still at this point, because many of those people haven't ever been tested, right? So I would say one way to think about it is once you know that you've been exposed to someone-- let's say you've gone to a restaurant and you get a call from that restaurant that someone was near you that had coronavirus or someone in your office has coronavirus, you should assume that you've been exposed and that you may be asymptomatic. Try to get tested.
And follow whatever the quarantine guidelines are at the moment. We know that they might be changing soon. But it's easy as Googling CDC quarantine. And that would be the best way to try to protect yourself from spreading it to others that are around you and protecting those that you love.
SEANA SMITH: Dr. Patel, are you at all concerned just about the CDC potentially shortening the amount of time that someone needs to quarantine after potential exposure, just in terms of the fact that-- I mean, it's been 14 days. You can make the argument as to why they're doing it. They're trying to, I guess, entice more people to abide by those guidelines. But then, of course, you could take the other side and say that you could potentially be going out when you're still contagious and spreading the disease to more people.
PAYAL PATEL: I think that the most important thing at this point would be people trying to follow any of the guidelines. And so when we think about it from the infection standpoint, each day that you quarantine, whether it's seven, eight, nine, ten, each day that you quarantine will actually increase your chances of not spreading it. So that's how I think of it.
So if you can even do seven versus ten, eleven versus nine, every day, you're actually helping to make sure that we're not spreading the virus further than it's already been spread. In the hospital, we're already out of beds in many states. And so if that is one small thing that the public can do, I think that would really help.
ADAM SHAPIRO: One quick last question for you, Dr. Patel, and I'm on this refresher course kind of thing. The survivability, what we're seeing of people who do go into hospital, that's improved dramatically over the last eight months. Is that correct? Do you know a statistic? Is there a number as to those who, unfortunately, do go to the hospital will be able to leave the hospital?
PAYAL PATEL: I don't have a statistic off the top of my head. But I do agree, the more we've learned about the virus and kind of the more that mask wearing has become the norm in many cities, we think that people are getting a little less sick. That doesn't mean that people aren't still getting hospitalized. And so let's say you have a heart attack or something else like that. If the hospital is full and you need to go in for non-COVID reasons, you want that bed to be there for you in case you have something else that happens.
SEANA SMITH: Dr. Patel, we really appreciate you taking the time. We know you're extremely busy right now. Thanks so much for joining us. We look forward to having you back soon.
