Doctors Brace For Worldwide Epidemics As Coronavirus Cases Surge
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: There is new concerns about the impact from the coronavirus outbreak and how it could reach far and wide around the globe. This morning, Japan's official in charge of the Olympics, said the Tokyo games scheduled for this summer could be postponed until later this year. This as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise around the world and in the United States. At least 12 states now have confirmed cases. And that is on top of the Americans who contracted the disease aboard the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship in Japan that we talked so much about at the very beginning of all of this. Some of those patients from the cruise ship remain under quarantine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, a facility that specializes in the treatment of infectious diseases. Joining me right now is the Medical Director and Infection Control Chief for Infectious Diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Dr. Mark Rupp. Doctor thank you for your time.</s>DR. MARK RUPP, MEDICAL DIRECTOR, INFECTION CONTROL CHIEF INFECTIOUS DISEASES AT NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER: My pleasure.</s>BOLDUAN: You have a unique perspective here. You and your team are some of the relatively few doctors in the country right now who have treated coronavirus patients. You had 13 of the coronavirus -- 13 of the Diamond Princess passengers tested positive were in your care. Can you give people some window into what the treatments have been like?</s>RUPP: Well, unfortunately, currently, there is no approved vaccine or treatment for coronavirus, and therefore, it is really important that with these initial patients that we try to learn as much as we can from them. And so we're proud of the fact that we have a clinical trial that is up and running here testing remdesivir, which is an antiviral agent. This trial is being led by one of our faculty, Dr. Andre Khalil, in close conjunction with the NIH. And so we're trying to gain some information to find out if this medication works.</s>BOLDUAN: Any clue on that front? Because Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH, he talked about kind of the promises of these clinical trials on these treatments. Any clue yet on how promising the treatment might be? Obviously, it is, you know, months out before you have the results.</s>RUPP: Well, interestingly, this is a drug that was developed and tested initially against Ebola. It was found to be safe but not very effective against Ebola. But in additional tests it was found to be showing some efficacy against MERS and SARS, other coronaviruses. So we're hopeful that it will have activity against the COVID-19 agent. Again, this is a very important trial. It's being done hopefully in multiple centers. We were the first to come online. And we're hoping that we're going to gain some very useful information initially as this outbreak continues and be able to hopefully offer people a medication that will help them.</s>BOLDUAN: What's your, if you could, best guess on timing for a conclusive -- a conclusion on this, on the trials?</s>RUPP: Well, this trial has been really nicely designed so that it is an adaptive trial, where it will go under evaluation at multiple points during the trial, additional agents could be potentially added to the trial if there appears to be something else that is coming online that is effective. And so we're hopeful that within a few months, we'll be able to get some very, very useful information.</s>BOLDUAN: That is really promising. I'll tell you, obviously, we have been getting and -- I can only imagine the questions you get -- but we have been getting a flood of questions from just people who are concerned about what the coronavirus means for them and for their families. Can you help us as a doctor who has been treating patients with coronavirus, what are the range of symptoms that these patients have exhibited?</s>RUPP: Well, you know, I think that everybody needs to take a deep breath and realize this is not some sort of existential threat against human kind. That in the next year, you know, a quarter, a third of us are not going to die like the Black Death. On the other hand, we do need to take it very serious and be prepared for it. The symptoms range everywhere from very mild disease, just a simple cold-like illness, upper respiratory infection, all the way up through lower respiratory infection, pneumonia, and as your viewers know, even death. We are finding that more people have the very mild disease rather than the severe aspects of the disease. And those that seem to have worse outcome are those who are a little older in age and those with underlying co-morbid events, so cardio- respiratory disease, immune suppressive disorders. The things that, you know, people are used to thinking about as predictive of poor outcome with influenza. Very much the same with this coronavirus.</s>BOLDUAN: Dr. Rupp, you and your team, thank you so much for the work you've done and the work and the risks that you take every day in your treatments and in your work. We really appreciate you coming on on. Much more to come, thank you very much.</s>RUPP: You're very welcome, thank you.</s>BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, we're following developments in Tennessee after the deadly tornadoes ripped through the state overnight. We're getting an update coming in. We'll be right back with that.