Public Health Specialist Dr Peter Marghella appears on Talk Back

Public Health Specialist Dr. Peter Marghella appeared again on the KGVO Talk Back show on Thursday to discuss the latest details on COVID 19 around that nation and the world.

After delivering the current worldwide and U.S. numbers, Dr. Marghella offered some good news about the pandemic in America.

“The good news that I can report today is overall we're down about 35% in cases from July, so we are seeing a pretty significant downward arc of reported morbidity and mortality, morbidity, at least in this case the actual illness which is good,” said Dr. Marghella.

With summer gone and the colder weather forcing people indoors, Dr. Marghella said cases may naturally rise again.

“Now as the cooler months move in, we face two concerns,” he said. “One, there's going to be less social distancing, so we can expect that unless the vaccine compliance goes up, which is an issue I'll talk about in a second, we're likely to see another spike in new cases and deaths, and how bad that spike is we don't yet know."

Dr. Marghella also warned about the upcoming cold and flu season.

“We're confluently moving into the annual flu season, and both CDC and who World Health Organization officials are warning that this could be a particularly bad year for the seasonal flu,” he said. In 2018 it was the worst seasonal flu event that we've had in 60 years in terms of produced morbidity and mortality, with more than 35,000 deaths across the United States.”

Dr. Marghella then focused on the numbers in Montana.

“I know from reporting that for a fact that Montana yesterday was recorded as having the highest number of hospitalizations in a single day, anywhere in the country,” he said. “So the hospitals in the state are already under significant duress in terms of being able to handle the patient load. And what we don't want to see for sure happening is that it's going to get worse.”

Dr. Marghella has a Doctor of Science degree in public health preparedness; master's degrees in healthcare administration and policy, national security and Strategic Studies and the medical management of chemical biological, radiological and high explosive weapons of mass destruction.

He has appeared on Talk Back several times both before and during the pandemic.