On 'Face the Nation,' Farrugia says Mayo is using AI to anticipate COVID-19 hot spots
Dr. Gianrico Farrugia, the president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, made another national television appearance Sunday morning — this time with CBS’s Face the Nation. Farrugia spoke remotely from Rochester. Below are a couple of highlights of his conversation with host Margaret Brennan.The full video interview can be found at the bottom of this article.
MB: One of the therapies that's gotten a lot of attention is these antibody serums. Tell me what your thoughts are on how effective that can be.
GF: So we know that in order to really handle this crisis, we have to take many different approaches. The best antivirus still remains washing your hands, and we have to remind people of that. Then there are the antivirals themselves that attack the virus themselves. Then there are agents that are effective at blocking the molecules that the virus causes our own cells to release. And that can prevent some of the damage we're seeing in the lungs and other organs, including the kidneys.
And then there are these… convalescent plasma, where you take plasma from a person who has had the virus and has recovered and has now an antibody response to it; and take that and in general, you can treat four people from one person. And doing so, you can provoke an artificial, a given response that allows them to recover more quickly. This is based on other diseases. It is now being tried for the coronavirus, for COVID-19. And Mayo Clinic and other institutions are working very hard, collaborating with industry to make sure that we can have adequate supply to test if this is going to make a difference. And I'm hopeful that it will.
MB: We've also heard from epidemiologists about the hope of contact tracing, basically figuring out who you've come in contact with in order to determine how at risk you are. How would something like that work in the United States?
GF: So every country has a different threshold on privacy of information, on data. But certainly we as a country have plenty of technology to do better at tracing. We've been collaborating, for instance, with M.I.T. on an app called Safe Paths where you can opt-in and then within your network you know if somebody within that network tested positive or even has symptoms. Then we're working with a company called nference in Boston at really becoming better on predicting hot spots, because currently we're predicting hot spots very close to or even a little too late from when they start to occur. And you have the ability to use artificial intelligence to real-time know when a test is positive, but also understand things like: OK, how many tests happened in the last 24, 48 hours? Because that's really important. How many people are being admitted? You can get a much better idea of where the next hot spot is and then move resources.
And in the last couple of days we've tried that; we've done that within the state of Minnesota. And we believe that there are many of these innovations that are happening across the country that will help us improve the way we trace and the way we advise people to be able to one, avoid getting sick and once they get sick, to understand what we can do for their immediate contact. And that is one of the very important ways that we can flatten that curve and at the same time inform the public, because, as you know, fear is a big part of this current pandemic.
Dr. Furragia concluded the interview by thanking healthcare workers across the nation for their response to the coronavirus outbreak.
This was his second TV interview in the past two weeks. You can find our recap of Farrugia’s March 18 conversation on CNBC here.
Cover: Screenshot courtesy CBS News
