Doctor on states reopenings amid COVID-19: ‘The risk will be so much higher for us in the fall’

Dr. J. Nwando Olayiwola, Chair and Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Ohio State University, joins Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita to discuss the surge of coronavirus cases happening across the Midwest, as more states look to reopen their businesses and restaurants.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: The number of coronavirus infections are surging in the Midwest. All Midwestern states except Ohio reporting higher numbers in the last four weeks, with South Dakota seeing the largest percentage increase, up 166%. Nationally, the number of COVID-19 cases have now passed 7 million.

Let's bring in Dr. Nwando Olayiwola. She is chair and professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Ohio State. It's great to have you on today.

Let's talk about what you are seeing on the ground there. We pointed out Ohio, the state itself certainly an outlier, when you look at the surges we've seen in cases across the Midwest. But we've also seen a recent outbreak at Ohio State University, the biggest one that we have seen in the state. How are you seeing the push and pull right now on where the virus is headed?

J. NWANDO OLAYIWOLA: Yeah, thank you, Akiko. Yeah, it's certainly an interesting time, as we're seeing the growth, 7 million cases in the United States. That's really a challenge. And over 200,000 people have died at this point now.

In Ohio, you know, to be clear, we do have increasing cases, which we're seeing in a number of different college campuses and college towns. You're seeing similar cumulative increases in cases at University of Georgia, at University of Alabama. And so I think as we're starting to have students come back onto campus and the schools start to open, we are seeing the student positivity increasing, which is something that we could have expected as we planned for the reopening. But it's here now with us.

AKIKO FUJITA: So now that it is here, how do you counter that?

J. NWANDO OLAYIWOLA: I think, you know, there are a lot of things that we need to do. We are still, it's still very important that we're masking and we're social distancing and that we're also testing. We saw a lot of the spike that has happened more recently a result of schools reopening, but also a number of highly congested congregated parties and events over the Labor Day weekend. And so really still need people to abide by the public health precautions that are out there, really, to stay at a distance from people, to wear your mask, to abide by all the different hygiene recommendations that are out there, and really just not to congregate in such large numbers, as people are doing.

AKIKO FUJITA: We've seen the lag in the number of cases that tick up just a few weeks after the activity is changed. If you're talking about school reopenings, certainly a lot of guests we've been speaking to have said the uptick you're seeing right now is a result of some of those reopenings that we saw several weeks ago.

Now you've got Florida Governor DeSantis coming out and saying he's going to be lifting the restrictions on restaurants. You've got Indiana this weekend coming out and saying they're going to a phase five in the reopening, which would be full capacity for restaurants and gyms, among other areas.

What does that suggest in terms of what we're likely to see two weeks, three weeks down the line?

J. NWANDO OLAYIWOLA: Yeah. No, it's a great question. I still think it's a little too early. Because we're entering the fall and the risk is going to be so much higher for us in the fall. In the fall, as you can imagine, the weather starts to change, it starts to get colder. And as we've been recommending that people-- you know, if you do want to congregate, it's better to do it outside and when you've got space to be able to do that with outdoor air. But when you start to say it's colder and people will now shift a lot of their activity and engagement indoor, I think it's too early.

Because as you said, rightfully, we'll start to see the progress weeks after you make the changes. And so I think we need to give time to see what happens with the fall, what happens with the flu, what happens as people start to move indoors more and more when the weather gets colder, and then start to decide what is safe to do and how do we reopen safely when we get there.

But I think it's too early to do it when we haven't yet seen the impact of the cold weather and the changes that will come in the fall.

AKIKO FUJITA: And to that point, we did hear Dr. Anthony Fauci saying that he wants to see the number of cases fall below 10,000 a day before flu season starts in October. We're well above that right now. How realistic is that number and how aggressive does the response right now against the virus need to be or need to change in order to meet that kind of goal?

J. NWANDO OLAYIWOLA: Yeah. No, Dr. Fauci is absolutely right. I think the better positioned we are to enter the fall with a low number of cases, the better we will do when we get there. We're averaging 43,000 new cases every single day. And so that's a 16% increase from where we were just a week ago.

And so this is the time, as I'm saying, we really do need to make sure that we take the time to do it right now, so that in the fall we'll be prepared. I think it's going to be hard for us, given if everything stays as it is now and we've got students back on campuses, schools are reopened, a lot of business are back as usual, and we try to do everything that we're doing right now, I think it's going to be hard for us to get that number down as we enter the fall to the 10,000, because we're so far from it right now.

AKIKO FUJITA: So I mean, does that suggest that we're going to continue to see the 40,000 a day? Is that the trajectory of the virus in the short term?

J. NWANDO OLAYIWOLA: Yeah. I mean, I hope we don't. But I think that we will. Now there's also an opportunity for, as the students do come back to their campuses and the schools have opened and we start to really kind of reinforce and restate the importance of the various public health precautions that they need to abide by, we could start to see behavior change. And if we do see that behavior change that we've been asking for, then it is possible that we can do better.

So I'm not saying that it's a bleak outlook, but I do think that we'll just have to be very vigilant and aggressive in making sure that we adhere to what we've been asking.

AKIKO FUJITA: And finally, we have Novavax now entering the final stages of its clinical trials. I think we counted about five drug makers that are currently being supported by Operation Warp Speed. What do you make of the news that came out today, 10,000 patients likely to be enrolled in the UK? And how should we be looking at this in the broader scheme of this race to try and get one of the vaccines, at the very least, to market?

J. NWANDO OLAYIWOLA: Yeah, I agree with you. I hope that we'll be able to get one to market. We have over 40 vaccine trials that are going on right now. And we have, Novavax just moved to phase 3, which means they've got a large scale high population efficacy testing going on now, which is great. We have about 10 others that are in that phase 2 and phase 3 as well.

So I think that we can-- we're moving along, the science is moving. I mean, it does take time to see if people will build and mount an antibody response to the virus. And so that's why you can't really get this done very quickly. And you also have to be very careful that there are not adverse side effects as a result of the vaccine.

And so right now, we don't have anything that's approved yet. I think Novavax is the big news because they have gotten to phase 3. I believe they're going to have 10,000 people in the UK that are going to be part of this. And so they have-- there's some excitement about it because in their earlier studies, and I don't think it's been published in a peer reviewed literature yet, but they did show that monkeys that were vaccinated did get some pretty good protection.

And so, you know, optimistic that we'll be able to get one of these eventually, you know, out for approval. But the race is definitely on, and we're hoping that we'll get some good results from these.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yes, still a lot of questions, to your point, about the efficacy, the ability to scale up once these vaccines are approved. Dr. Nwando Olayiwola, great to have you on today.

J. NWANDO OLAYIWOLA: Thanks, Akiko.