Dr. Robyn Gershon, NYU School of Global Public Health Clinical Professor of Epidemiology, joins Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith, Dan Howley, and Sibile Marcellus to discuss how hospitals are managing the increasing number of cases of the coronavirus.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Let's get back to the latest on the coronavirus. Again, the number of cases really skyrocketing worldwide. Here in the US, the US continues to have the highest number of confirmed cases, with more than 140,000. We heard from the Trump administration numerous times over the weekend, but President Trump yesterday extending the national social distancing guidelines through the end of April.

So here to talk more about this, I want to bring Dr. Robyn Gershon, Professor of Epidemiology at NYU. And Dr. Gershon, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. I know that you're extremely busy right now.

But, I mean, the number of cases, and how rapidly the number of cases has been climbing, really has everyone's attention at this point. When we were on the air on Friday, we had just over 90,000 cases here in the US. Now that number is over 140,000 cases. How much worse do you think this is likely to get?

ROBYN GERSHON: Well, we have to recall that part of this increase is because we're now testing. Remember, we did not have testing rolled out when we should have, actually a couple of months ago. We were delayed. Now some of those tests are coming forward, and we're getting these positive results.

Actually, the numbers I've seen have indicated that even this number is a small fraction of the actual number of positive cases in the US. I've seen estimates from anywhere from 5 to 15 times that number, with some people saying it could be as much as 3/4 of a million, up to 2 million Americans infected right now.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Gershon, when would you expect cases to peak? Is it too early to tell? Or is that something that you think we could expect to see within the next 14 to 21 days, like some have been estimating?

ROBYN GERSHON: Well, right now, they're saying that the US peak overall, the entire US, will be around April 15. But remember that some areas have been impacted earlier. So for instance, New York City, New York state, the epicenter right now of the epidemic, we will peak around April 7 to April 15.

But there are just some-- several areas, states, cities that are just now reporting cases. They may be much later. And I believe that's what's behind, to some extent, this April 30 deadline.

DAN HOWLEY: Doctor, this is Dan Howley. I just want to ask, you know, with these lockdowns, kind of patchwork, state-by-state, when we look at the way the US is handling it, the drastic increase of cases here-- in fact, the US has more cases than China-- are we mishandling this compared to what China did and what other countries are doing?

ROBYN GERSHON: I mean, obviously we could have done a lot of things better. We could have rolled out testing, effective testing, much sooner. We could have done contact tracing at that point. We could have identified those cases, figured out where they were, looked for hotspots, really put down very targeted quarantine-- quarantining procedures around those cases.

But look, that's behind us now. It's too late for that. Now what we have to do is really identify the emerging hotspots-- Chicago, Detroit, some cities in Atlant-- you know, Atlanta and smaller cities in Georgia. We have to go find those cases, surround those cases, get them isolated, get them tested, get them in home-quarantine or home-isolation. Because the sooner we can get that curve dropping down, the better it will be for our hospitals.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Gershon, I want to talk to you just in terms of the, I guess initiatives that we have seen happen, because the number of hospital beds are running out. We had the Navy hospital ship entering New York Harbor today. They have 1,000 beds. We saw tents going up in Central Park over the weekend.

When we see what's happening in New York City, do you expect to see similar events or similar initiatives in other parts of the country as well?

ROBYN GERSHON: I think so. But I think it depends on the density. Remember, New York City is huge, dense, over 8 million people living very close by. Of course, a lot of people have left the city. It's palpable, even in my own building where I live, on the Upper East Side.

But I think in certain other dense areas, they will see the same thing. Will we have the same numbers? No, because we have so many more people.

On the other hand, they don't have as many resources. In New York City, we are blessed to have over 40 hospitals. We have 11 hospitals alone in the public health system.

So we do have resources. We do have cases. The problem is they have been mismatched to date. We have not had all the masks where they needed to be. We do not have the ventilators where they needed to be. We do not have the beds or even the staffing.

Now Cuomo has asked de Blasio, please coordinate, at least amongst the public hospitals, and then between public and private.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, I wanted to ask you just about the supply shortages that we have been seeing, because we've had conflicting reports. I mean, President Trump was out over the weekend saying that the number of ventilators-- ventilators needed went from 10,000 to 20,000, all the way up to 300,000. The Trump administration has been questioning at least what exactly hospital need-- what hospitals need at this point.

From your view, what do hospitals need? How many ventilators? How many masks are there, just in terms of shortages?

ROBYN GERSHON: I mean, there's no doubt that there are shortages. Look, I have family members in the health care sector, in hospitals right now, who are telling me exactly what's going on on the front lines. They have real shortages.

I don't think a lot of people who are not in health care realize that you need to change out masks. You need to change out N95s and face masks and gowns that get dirty, and gloves. I mean, we have standard infection-control procedures that have been ingrained in us from the very earliest parts of training about how to keep ourselves safe and keep ourselves from spreading from patient to patient.

I think definitely our demand outstripped the supply. And as these numbers kept on growing and the cases were far beyond what we had anticipated, those shortages became real. They are real. It's not a matter of anything walking out the back door, for sure.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Yeah, I mean you mentioned there, it's-- the shortages are definitely real. As most Americans, I was watching that press conference yesterday, where President Trump was saying they must be coming out the back door or something. But you did mention that there's been some mismanagement in New York, where the masks and the ventilators aren't going to where they need to be. So is that possibly the reason why there's this discrepancy between the number that they need and what President Trump says is being sent?

ROBYN GERSHON: Look, even the local health departments are show-- they're so busy, so short staffed, that they are not capturing the numbers of positive cases in their own jurisdiction and reporting it to CDC, and that's part of the problem. We don't really have a very good handle on how many cases are really out there. So hospitals, of course, have their own supply.

They are, kind of just in time, kind of-- for all their supplies, they don't have a lot of space. It costs a lot of money. So they don't keep months and months of supplies on hand. As soon as we realized there would be much more of this pandemic in our own area, they tried to ramp up.

But the problem was it was not coordinated. In our own disaster plans, at the federal level, it says FEMA and the DHS, Department of Homeland Security, will take charge of all these supplies and help coordinate their delivery so that they're evenly spaced out. That did not happen. It's not the fault of these local hospitals at all, I don't think, in my opinion.

SEANA SMITH: All right, Dr. Gershon, thanks so much for joining us today.