Hey thanks so much for
joining us here on 9 News
Plus I'm Chris Bianchi,
joined by our Nine News health
expert COVID extraordinaire.
So many titles on Doctor Pyle Corey,
thanks for joining us here.
Doctor Coley.
Thank you for having me, Chris. I love
that COVID title that you just gave me.
And well now I have the COVID
dummy title applied to myself.
I got COVID. Last week,
the reason we'll apply some
of that to this here today,
but we do want to discuss COVID.
I know every is boarded.
The topic. I get it.
I get it, but folks,
it's still prevalent.
It's still out there and some cases
we were just chatting with Chris
Vanderveen as well that this may be the
second highest wave here in Colorado.
It is everywhere right now here in
the middle of the summer, Dr Coley, what?
What are some of the top line takeaways
about what we should be doing?
What we should know right now with COVID?
Well, we should know.
As you said Chris, that hasn't gone away.
Even though we wanted to,
in fact, 300 people a day are
dying from COVID nationwide.
That's an airplane full of people,
so it's still causing severe illness.
In some people.
It's not just a cold for those people,
and they're estimating about 120 to 140,000
daily infections in the United States,
but there is actually data that suggests that
we may be underestimating that 7 to 10 fold,
so the actual numbers Chris
maybe a million infections a day,
million new infections,
because now people are testing.
At all, so we're not really even
able to see where we're going.
It's almost like we have a blindfold
on our eyes that is leading us to
believe that this infection is gone.
Where as you said,
there's actually infection all around us,
and people who already been
infected with COVID once are
now even getting reinfected.
And at this point,
I think every single one of us has
either had it or knows somebody
who's had it and recovered from it.
But that still doesn't mean
you're in the clear.
Maybe before we get into some
more more of those other topics,
I think it's important for
people in home to know what
should you do just to repeat.
If you come down with COVID,
you have those symptoms you wake up,
you have, let's say at home
test you test positive.
What should people do at that
point? So the first thing most
important thing obviously is
isolate yourself because most of
the variants now circulating in the
Community are that BA four and five.
Which are the most contagious
variants that we've had so far.
Their growth rate is really high,
and so you don't want to expose
anyone else in your family,
even if they may already have had COVID.
Because they could be at
high risk of reinfection,
and the second thing you want to do
is make sure you make a call to your
doctor to see if you need or qualify
for the medication which needs to
be started within 5 days of symptom
onset called Pax Slovic and it's a
Pfizer medication and it really does
help reduce the duration of symptoms,
reduce your infectivity so you're actually
contagious for shorter period of time.
There's even data that can reduce
the risk of long COVID and
complications that can occur from that,
so don't just turn on the television and.
And take some ibuprofen.
You may actually want to make that
call and see if you might need
something a little bit stronger.
Certainly if you're immunocompromised,
you know or don't have an
intact immune system,
then not only would you need that,
you might even need potentially
additional therapies as well.
OK, good to know all right.
So mention BA4BA5 what you
mentioned that they have high
growth rates, high activity.
What else do we know about this?
We know that they're derived
from the parent variant,
so the parent is the Omicron strain,
and I was like to tell my
mom I'm smarter than her.
And I think most of us tell our
parents that and so this particular
child is smarter than the parents.
So the four and the five,
particularly the five,
are more intelligent because not
only do they have the mutations
that that the original Omicron had
that made it spread efficiently,
but they also trick our immune system,
so our antibodies,
whether that's from natural
infection or from vaccine,
don't recognize this variant as well.
They don't work as well to neutralize it,
so it becomes more contagious
and more infectious.
And all this is really layered
on a background.
Nationwide of us, you know,
having fun over the summer traveling,
not having mask mandates anymore.
So many of the indoor places like
shopping malls and grocery stores,
etcetera.
We don't have masks anymore,
so this is really facilitating the
spread of this infection and actually
making this the fastest growing
variant to date that's been out there.
So the obvious behavioral adjustment
that should be taken now is to reapply
those masks in public settings.
Yes, I mean, we have to mitigate and that.
Involves 2 things.
One is vaccines and boosters,
so if you haven't been vaccinated or boosted,
go and get that because that'll
protect you against serious illness.
You know from the four and the five
it'll keep you out of the hospital.
It doesn't necessarily guarantee
you won't get the infection,
but it'll keep you out of the
hospital and then the second is to
start to reintroduce those measures.
A lot of us have really gotten
the sense that oh it was here,
but now it's gone and the pandemic is over
and we have to quote UN quote live our
lives and get our lives back to normal.
What we're not realizing is that.
What we do today will set us up for the
next six months for the fall for the winter,
for the next year.
And if we don't start mitigating,
we're going to facilitate the spread
of the infection and we may end up
getting now another new variant
come this fall or come this winter,
which may actually end up being more
aggressive in making us sicker,
which so far these omicron variants
and sub variants,
at least thankfully haven't been
making us sicker,
but we already have data coming out
of India where there's a BA 2.75,
which is now also.
The United States total of nine
countries that potentially is even
more efficient than the BA 5 variant.
Goodness, yeah, so OK with that said,
the symptoms have generally led to people
not getting that ill though you are.
You said that three people a
day are still dying from COVID,
so this is not nothing.
The common refrain I hear and again I
don't mean to this is not my my opinion.
This is the common refrain out there
is that while it's just a coal,
it's just a general illness.
You know, I just want to.
I'm tired of the masks.
What's your counter to that?
A couple of things I would say so.
First you're right, so for most people
it probably will have mild symptoms.
In fact, we're seeing that you're not
getting as much fever or muscle aches.
You're just getting more of a runny
nose or sore throat etcetera with BB85.
But getting that infection,
it's not just a cold because we don't
yet know what the long term effects are.
In fact, we're getting data that tells
us that people who've gotten you know
infected with COVID more than once are
at higher risk for severe organ damage.
Lung damage, heart damage.
Pancreas which makes insulin.
They're at higher risk for developing
long COVID as a sequela and they're
just at higher risk in general of
having worse outcomes if they have
that infection multiple times.
So even though it may just seem like a cold,
we don't yet know what the long
term consequences are of getting
it over and over again.
Getting it also doesn't give you a
free pass because the immunity only
lasts a few weeks and then goes away,
and then you're sort of.
Acceptable again,
and in fact we've seen reinfection
occurring multiple times,
so the more you can protect yourself,
the better.
And then the third reason,
of course,
is that every person that gets
it facilitates the spread of the
infection which opens the door
for new variants to emerge.
Speaking of new variants,
how worried are you at this point
about the fall and the winter?
Based on current trends,
you know I'm starting to get worried.
I don't think we need to panic
because I think we have all the
tools in our toolkit to really make
it a better fall winter season.
So the first is the vaccines.
I really hope we see an expedited
BA4BA5 specific vaccine now.
The FDA has mandated that of the
vaccine manufacturers as of June,
but I want to see that in
the next month or two.
I really want to have our Ducks
lined up by the time September comes
so that we are ready to distribute
that vaccine on a large spectrum.
So I think that'll really help.
The second is, we know,
we know how to dance with
this virus when it moves.
We move and it just moved.
It made a big move with this BA 5 variant
and now it's time for us to reciprocate.
And personally,
you know I'm putting on my mask whenever
I go anywhere into a crowded public space.
Whether it's a shopping mall or a grocery
store or anything like that outdoors,
I don't wear it as much because we know
that even though this is more contagious,
it doesn't spread as efficiently outdoors
unless they're super close contact.
But I think it's time to think about
introducing those masks back into our life.
I know we hate them,
I know they're pain.
I know they're annoying,
but they're really empower us to
take control of the narrative and
really shape where this goes.
Otherwise we end up being one step
behind and essentially falling
victim to what the virus is doing,
which ends up being more and more infections,
more and more variance.
Well, when it comes to variance and
when it comes to those vaccines,
you mentioned that you want to see the FDA
come out with a specific one for BA4BA5,
but is there in my mind my
uneducated mind on this.
Is there not a thought that there's a
little dog chase tail where it's just?
There's gonna be a new variant out there,
you know there's two places
around 5 in India.
Is it too too late essentially.
It is and I think what that's the problem.
We're one step behind, but The thing is,
the variance that emerge usually emerge
from the lineage of the parents.
So if you target the parent,
even if you end up being one step behind,
you potentially could have some
cross reactivity. Now, of course,
that's not true with four and five,
because they've escaped.
They're an escape variant because
they've escaped our immune system
even though they come from Omicron,
which is BA one.
But I think in general they're probably
going to protect us better against Omicron,
a four to five vaccine than the original.
Muhan strain, which now at this
point is you know over 2 years old.
We don't even really know that that
is circulating very much because
it's not a dominant infection
because these other ones are just
much more easily transmissible.
OK, so yes, that's something
reasonably positive.
Anything else maybe positive.
Good to close out with.
Well, I think we're in a really good
place in general because we figured out
how to keep people out of the hospital.
We've been lucky that these
variants are not more virulent,
even though they're more contagious.
They're not making people sicker,
so it's keeping people out of the hospital,
but I think we should use that
advantage to our benefit at this point
so that we can really buy ourselves
some time and and the fall is coming.
So I want to remind everybody,
of course, about the flu shot.
You know about getting your COVID booster
if you haven't gotten that already,
just making sure all your ducks
are lined up in a row,
because this particular year we may
see a worse flu season just because
for the last two years or so,
none of us have really been
exposed to the flu.
Very much.
The flu activity has been very low.
Because of the fact that we're wearing masks,
and since those have mostly come off now,
this might change.
Alright. Good advice,
I appreciate that Doctor Powell Coley.
Thanks for giving us an update here on COVID.
Thanks for joining us here on News Plus.