Former White House Medical Unit Physician for Obama, Biden and Pence, Dr Jennifer Pena, joins Seana Smith to discuss why she thinks the coronavirus outbreak requires a more "aggressive stance."

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: In the meantime, we are going to bring in-- we have Dr. Peña right now, Dr. Jennifer Peña. She's a former White House Medical Unit physician for President Obama, also for former Vice President Joe Biden and for current Vice President Pence.

And Dr. Peña, thank you so much for making the time just to join us today. When we talk about the escalating number of cases not only here in the US, but worldwide, what's your take on the situation at this point?

JENNIFER PEÑA: Yes, thank you for having me. So basically, the issue right now is that we're not really adhering to social distancing recommendations and mandates pretty much across the world. Here in the US, we're pushing as providers to really recommend to patients to stay home as much as possible. I'm part of a bipartisan group of providers and medical professionals that have coalesced to deliver this message as strongly as possible not only to our communities, but also to our government officials, both local and at a federal level, to try to encourage and recommend social distancing to try to prevent against further propagation of this virus.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Peña, and in terms of the steps that the Trump administration has taken so far, they've announced-- they've been discussing different policy measures. From your perspective, as someone in the medical field, what do you think needs to be addressed first?

JENNIFER PEÑA: Yes. Again, I can't emphasize enough, the social distancing has to be done yesterday. We're behind the curve. We started late. It happened in Italy as well. And I think we need to learn from what China did. We need to learn from what Japan did and some of these other countries. They enacted a very, very strong social distancing and isolation mandates that really were the key to try to flatten that curve and prevent further spread of the virus. I think the government really needs to learn from those lessons and start acting and acting fast.

AKIKO FUJITA: Doctor, I have a quick question on the capacity issues. During the press conference today, we heard the president talk about sort of mobilizing these industries, whether it is a company like GM or Honeywell or 3M, to start producing some of these masks.

As I understand it right now, a lot of these hospitals are working with very limited capacity. They're reusing some of the masks that have already been used. Can you help us understand how that complicates the overall picture at a time when a lot of these hospitals are already overrun?

JENNIFER PEÑA: Absolutely. I think it's a two-part issue-- personal protective equipment as well as equipment that is needed for critically ill patients, say, ventilators and other equipment that supports people who are ventilated. There's a national shortage of that, and so that's one problem.

But the other problem's also infrastructure. We just don't have the capacity to accommodate the expected number of people that are going to require this kind of critical care. Deploying ships like the Comfort and other Navy ships to accommodate some of these non-COVID patients is a good start, but even those platforms will be overwhelmed. I'm familiar with the Comfort and its capacities as having been in the military for 14 and 1/2 years, and I know that, again, that just scratches the surface.

So we have to encourage-- the government should encourage things like what's happening in Seattle, where fields of sports fields are getting utilized to set up pop-up hospitals in tents and other such facilities to improve the infrastructure capacity as well. So yes, definitely the equipment, personal protective equipment, and the critical care equipment is important, but we have to also emphasize infrastructure and capacity as well.

DAN HOWLEY: Doctor Peña, this is Dan Howley. I just have a quick question as far as what we can expect going forward. We're talking about the capacity for the US, as far as infrastructure goes, in treating patients, as well as standard medical care that we're going to continue to see. Worst-case scenario, what are we looking at here going forward?

JENNIFER PEÑA: And, you know, that's an excellent question and a hard one to answer. The numbers change so rapidly when it comes to how many new cases and the incidence and prevalence of this disease that it's hard to estimate. But if we look at the numbers of what's happening in Italy and some of the other countries that are going through similar situations, we have to expect the worst. We should expect that these numbers will continue to double and triple at a very fast rate-- and so again, infrastructure, but also encouraging private industry to contribute.

I just realized recently that LVMH, that conglomerate that owns Louis Vuitton and some of these other companies, have turned their manufacturing factories into production of hand sanitizer. There are some companies here in the United States, distilleries out of Minnesota, that have also turned their production facilities into the ability to produce things like hand sanitizer, et cetera. And so I think the government needs to do its job, but we also should incentivize private industry to pitch in. We all-- it's "all hands on deck" kind of crisis time, and everybody needs to contribute.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And I also want to talk about what's happening in New York. So Governor Cuomo is now going to put in place this shelter at home for New Yorkers. But the numbers just keep skyrocketing. It's over 7,000. Now, you mentioned earlier that you believe that the reason why we're seeing these numbers go up is because people aren't abiding by the guidelines. They're not really social distancing. So how do you combat something like that in a city like New York, where people are just used to going out to do everything on their own?

JENNIFER PEÑA: Absolutely, and again, excellent question. I'm sure a lot of you have also seen the news of spring breakers out on the beach, not really abiding by these recommendations to social distance. And so I think it's going to have to be a much more aggressive stance. If it requires the National Guard to become involved, we might need to do that. If we can't do it on our own, then we're going to have to really put down some serious rules and mandates so that people understand the severity of the issue.

It might be a curfew. It might be, you know, something even more aggressive. But at this point, if we're not able to do it on our own, then we might need to have law enforcement assist with keeping people at home so that we can keep people safe.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Peña, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us. Lots of great information there. We hope to have you back. Thanks so much for joining us.