BOISE, Idaho — Medical leaders from Saint Alphonsus and St. Luke's recently sat down with our Doug Petcash to talk about the importance of the vaccine rollout here in Idaho.
The extensive interviews were part of this week's Viewpoint, which you can watch right on KTVB this Sunday.
Both say the vaccines are a huge step forward but caution that now is not the time to let our guard down.
"I think December 14 is going to go down in history as the D-Day of the war against COVID," said Dr. Steven Nemerson, Saint Alphonsus Chief Clinical Officer. "And what I mean by that is we finally have the tool to eradicate this virus from Idaho, eastern Oregon and the United States, but it's going to be a long slog ahead. And we need to start with vaccinating our frontline health care providers because these are the people, if we can keep them healthy and keep them at work, they're going to be able to take care of the patients who continue to get COVID for coming months as we're trying to roll out this vaccine."
Dr. Souza do you worry that people will let their guard down because of the vaccine rollout and not keep following the safety protocols of mask wearing, social distancing, etcetera?
"Absolutely. I mean there's an unanswered scientific question with the vaccine," said Dr. Jim Souza, St. Luke's Chief Medical Officer. "We know that the vaccine prevents the severe end of the infection, the disease state of COVID-19 where patients are symptomatic. We don't know scientifically, definitively today that it actually prevent SARS COVID infection and contain the spread."
Doctors Nemerson and Souza also discuss how their hospitals are handling the high number of coronavirus cases, and how their staffs are holding up under the strain.
Viewpoint airs Sunday morning at 6:30 on KTVB and several more times after that on 24/7 starting at 9 a.m.