Medical professionals are seeing a shortage of supplies as hospitals are faced with a rapidly growing number of coronavirus cases. Emergency Physician & Visiting Professor at George Washington University School of Public Health Dr. Leana Wen joins Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith to discuss.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. We're talking, obviously, the latest developments with the coronavirus. The number of cases are jumping at a very quick rate. Worldwide, we have more than 350,000 confirmed cases. In New York, they issued new numbers today, now total cases in New York state alone above 20,000.

For more on the latest on these numbers and also what the government is doing to deal with the influx of patients, we have Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician and visiting professor at George Washington School of Public Health. And Dr. Wen, thanks for joining us today. We have new recent developments that we want to discuss with you first. So just-- we had the US Surgeon General, he was warning that the crisis was, quote, "going to get bad" this week. Many people are saying that that could be an understatement. Staffing for hospitals is something that we were just talking about before the break, just in terms of the fact that that is still a big question here going forward. Where do things stand?

LEANA WEN: Well, the Surgeon General is right that things are going to be bad, but I would say that things have already been bad. When I talk to my colleagues who are on the frontlines in New York, in San Francisco, in Seattle, and Boston, just in wherever it is that the outbreak has already hit us, it's clear that we are so under-prepared, that our beds are already being filled, that our health care workers are going out-- going without personal protective equipment, which is such a travesty.

I mean, I just cannot imagine that we would be in this position now where I have-- my friends and colleagues are begging for masks and goggles and gowns over social media. I cannot imagine that this is happening here in the US. Things are already bad, and we are going to see numbers escalate in the coming weeks and months. Actually, the numbers, are as bad as they are now, will seem like a drop in the bucket in just a week or two's time.

Now, all that said, we have a very serious situation. We need all hands on deck. I know that health care workers are already doing their best. State and local officials have stepped up in major ways during this epidemic, and I hope that the federal government will also follow suit because this is a national emergency. I mean, this is a pandemic, the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes. And we can't just have individual efforts here. We need a national, coordinated effort.

And we have to keep in mind that there are things that each of us, as individuals, can do, too, that we're not powerless here. There are individual actions we can take when it comes to social distancing, protecting ourselves and our families, good hand and face hygiene. All these are action steps that we can take that will help to change the trajectory of this disease and whether this crisis is an emergency or turns into a catastrophe.

AKIKO FUJITA: Dr. Wen, I'm curious to get your take, the medical take on all this, which is this idea that's been floated around from the financial community today. You just heard from Bill Ackman saying, look, a 30-day federal shutdown and then a gradual reopening, we've heard the president talk about this as well. So long as testing is continuing, don't shut down the economy as a whole. Is that-- I'm wondering, as somebody who is on the medical side of things, is that a way to combat this virus, and do you think something like that could work? Or is it really all or nothing in trying to contain it?

LEANA WEN: Right now, it has to be all or nothing because think about a forest fire. I mean, we are in the middle of this fire. We're seeing that the fire is much faster-- it's going much faster than we have the equipment to put it out at the moment. We're seeing it killing dozens of people, soon to be hundreds and then thousands and tens of thousands of people. Now is not the right time for us to be taking our foot off the gas pedal.

We need to be going full force and doing everything we can, especially because so many people, unfortunately, are not even taking this pandemic as seriously as they should be. I mean, schools are shut, so many businesses are closed, but people are still having playdates. They're still getting together to play basketball. I mean, these individual actions make a big difference. And I'm afraid that if there is messaging coming from the federal government saying, oh, let's let up some of these restrictions, that it's going to make this fire so much worse than it needs to be.

Now, I do understand, of course, the economic trade-offs. I do understand that we need to be planning ahead, but we can do both. We can plan ahead for what-- how we have the economy, how we can have jobs back, what we're going to be doing in the months to come. But we should not be letting up on our efforts right now because we're talking about the blood of tens of thousands, if not more, of our citizens on our hands.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Actually, yes, absolutely. Following up on that, so Governor Cuomo is putting an order for hospitals to increase capacity by 50%. You've got Mayor Bill de Blasio who's saying that ventilators, we're going to run out after this week, and we're going to get to a point where we can't save people who could have been saved. So what can-- what kind of resources do you guys need right now to avoid that kind of a situation?

LEANA WEN: So there are three things that we have to think about when it comes to capacity. The first is beds, the second is equipment, and the third is staff. We need beds because patients are going to need care, so they need intensive care beds. They need hospital beds. And that's where hospitals can try to free up as much capacity as they can, but we also need the assistance of the federal government, the military to construct new hospitals, new field hospitals, which are starting, but we need a lot more of that.

The second is equipment. We need ventilators, but we also need personal protective equipment. If our health care workers literally cannot get masks and gowns, not even thinking about the ethical implications, but they're going to get sick, and then we're not going to have the existing staff, much less the new staff that we need. So we absolutely need that equipment. And then we need to-- we need more staff, but we have to protect our existing staff.

LEANA WEN: In order to make all of this happen, we need the weight of the federal government. This is not just a local or state response. Local and state officials are doing everything they can, but they are stretched to their limit. And that's why we have a federal government. That's why we need the federal government to step in and have a national, coordinated effort.

We keep on talking about this as a war against the virus. Well, then we need wartime mobilization. We need the president to put into effect the Defense Production Act. We need every resource of the federal government because we can't do this on our own. And why is this even called a national emergency if we're not putting the full weight of our national resources and political power behind it?

SEANA SMITH: All right, Dr. Leana Wen, thanks for joining us.