Dr.

Albert Ko and epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health joins us now for more on what we need to know about this spreading virus.

Dr.

Cho, thanks so much for joining us tonight.

Thank you, Miss Davis, for the invitation.

We keep hearing that people with underlying medical issues are more at risk of contracting this virus.

But what exactly are those underlying conditions?

First of all, most importantly, it's the elderly who have highest risk of dying from carnivorous.

Secondly, the people who have chronic health problems particularly underlying cancer, lung disease, cardiovascular disease as well as diabetes, have higher risk for dying of carnivores after they've been infected in hospitalized.

Are there other ways for this to spread besides person to person contact?

For example, in Washington state tomorrow, voters, they're sending in male balance.

So should we be worried about things like catching us through saliva in the mail?

So no.

So the Corona virus, like it's likely doesn't survive for extended periods of time, probably less than 99 days, and that's based on evidence from similar types of viruses in the same family.

So these viruses won't persist in long transit times their shipments across country and across across countries.

Big picture you work in public health.

Is this amount of testing that we're seeing in the U S enough.

So, no, you know, I always you know, we've seen the situation.

What's happening in Italy?

We've seen what's happened in Korea, and I think one of the most important things is really getting, you know, learning from the lessons that we've seen other countries to countries like Hong Kong, Singapore that actually controlled the virus fairly, fairly well in that requires, you know, a large amount of testing identifying people are sick, having them be isolated as well as implementing social distancing.

And that's actually been fascinating to me.

What are we not doing that Singapore has done so effectively?

Well, I think first of all is is that you know, what we see now in the United States is likely just the tip of the iceberg and what we need to do it like Singapore, like Hong Kong is too.

Do you know, expand the breath of our testing that we can identify patients are people who are sick and have them isolated so that they don't transmit the virus in the community.

And just yesterday, the surgeon general said that we're now in mitigation phase.

What exactly does that mean?

Well, so first of all, we were you know, we're in the containment phase, and that was where were every single case?

We're trying to track them down and isolate them, but also contact their trade, trace their contacts and isolate them in what we call quarantine.

Now that we have probably likely widespread community transmission.

That type of that type of intervention is actually fairly labor intensive.

So when you know so now we have to go to a mitigation phase where we need to rely not only on isolating patients but also using social distancing, reducing amount of mass gatherings may perhaps closing schools so that we can reduce the interactions between people that transmit the virus.

All right, Dr.

Albert Ko, We appreciate your wisdom tonight.

Thanks.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

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