Dr. Marty Makary on threat posed by asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus
A new study suggests 86 percent of coronavirus cases are asymptomatic carriers; insight from Dr. Marty Makary, professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University.
Health care providers are now at the highest risk of contracting the coronavirus, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Martin Makary told "Tucker Carlson Tonight," adding that he is "concerned" whether the exposure to the virus will ultimately put doctors and nurses out of commission.
"We know that health care workers are at the highest risk of getting this infection," Makary said. "I'm really concerned about our nation's nurses, respiratory therapists, doctors. While there may not be a physiological explanation, there is certainly an exposure explanation. In the hospital, those infections sometimes can be ubiquitous."
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Makary added, "I am concerned about health care workers because we are about to see a double whammy of a reduced workforce and a massive influx of patients. That is what we are concerned about. We only have about 100,000 beds and we could be seeing hundreds of thousands of critical care patients."
Addressing some of the questions surrounding the novel virus, Makary said it is still unknown why some infected patients exhibit no symptoms while others require hospitalization, and urged the younger generations who are less vulnerable to take the necessary precautions.
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"Everybody's immune system is different. We know generally it's hard for this virus to hurt young healthy people. But, it's those exceptions that make us cautious about giving people sort of a green light to go out there and do whatever they want," he explained.
"Young healthy people tend to be community transmitters. They affect the most vulnerable. This is one of those rare things where what we do as healthy people affects somebody we've never met before."
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