Watch a New York City Doctor Describe How Medical Professionals Fight Against COVID-19

Dr. Mark Pochapin, the Vice-Chair for Clinical Affairs at NYU Langone, is one of the many healthcare professionals around the country who are on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak. In a new interview with Katie Couric, part of a video series with TIME, he describes how medical workers are struggling to adapt and banding together in the face of a pandemic.

Up until recently, Pochapin says he was responsible for gathering physicians from different areas of expertise to help and care for patients that have COVID-19, a disease that he says “we’re learning about in real-time.”

“To me that’s the most difficult part of the whole thing,” Dr. Pochapin tells Couric. “We spend our entire careers as physicians studying, learning, understanding and here, we’re trying to get the information in real-time.”

Pochapin calls medical professionals the “soldiers in this war” and says that being able to make a little difference in this fight means a lot.

“I know the brilliance of the people working on this. The clinical trials, the scientists, the clinicians, everybody together. We’re going to figure this out,” Dr. Pochapin says.

New York City has the most confirmed cases in the country, with 106,763 positive tests and 7,349 deaths as of April 13, according to a tracker maintained by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Despite the numbers, Dr. Pochapin has been amazed by how people in the medical field have come together.

“We are literally all in this together and I am so grateful for everybody,” Dr. Pochapin says.

This interview is part of a special series produced in collaboration with Katie Couric. Read more from TIME Reports with Katie Couric, and sign up for her weekday morning newsletter Wake-Up Call with Katie Couric.

 

 

Write to Josiah Bates at josiah.bates@time.com.