Dr. Howard Forman, Yale Professor Radiology & Public Health, joins Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers and Anjalee Khemlani to discuss the latest coronavirus developments.
Video Transcript
KRISTIN MYERS: Let's chat now about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has grown to over 26 million cases here in the United States. We're joined now by public health expert, Dr. Howard Forman, Yale professor of radiology and public health. We also have Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani here with us now.
So doctor, I want to start on the news that the United States is lagging behind when it comes to finding those mutations and strains of coronavirus. I'm wondering how much that impacts the United States' ability amid our push to really increase vaccinations to really fight this pandemic here at home.
HOWARD FORMAN: Yeah, look, this is a problem that has existed since February. I mean, in February, we didn't have enough test kits. We didn't know that we already had widespread community infection in New York and in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and so on. And then, eventually, we got our test kits.
And now, in some ways, we're in the same position when it comes to genotyping. We're genotyping at a rate that's probably around 50% of what the UK does. And even that is up substantially over the last few weeks. We're just not good at this historically. And we need to get good at it if we're going to stay ahead of this or even catch up to this. We need to know what variants are in what locations. We need to learn more about the variants, how they're responding to vaccines. And we're going to be able to have to manage this proactively, as opposed to reactively.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Speaking of those variants, we're already talking about booster shots to help protect us against those. But we can't even figure out the initial supply. I know that the administration has talked about expanding doses to the pharmacies. And largely, it seems like we're relying on the two initial authorized vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna right now, with J&J possibly on the way.
But with that in mind, when we look at the efficacy results of these, and there's already debate among the general public about which vaccine is better. So can you lay that out for us? Does J&J's lower efficacy rate hold any water?
HOWARD FORMAN: Yeah, look, it's unfortunate that we've done-- we've had three vaccine trials come through, two of which the FDA has reviewed, one of which we've only been able to review via press release, and Novavax as well only by press release. But when you look at them, there's so many differences between them that it is unfair to say that Johnson & Johnson has lower efficacy compared to Moderna or Pfizer. There are so many reasons why that's the case.
We're basically looking-- we're seeing how good is J&J's protection against infection at day number 28 and comparing it to Moderna at day number 56. It's just not a fair comparison. We're also looking at different populations. J&J looked at populations that have included those that have been widely infected with the UK variant, South African variant, and probably the Brazil variant. And the Pfizer and Moderna were probably too early to have a significant number of those variants.
We've got to do a apples to apples comparison of these trials. And this is one of the problems with the United States right now, is we rely an awful lot on the private sector to do things. This is the type of thing, doing a comparative trial, that really requires coordination from the federal government, preferably from the NIH or CDC or both.
KRISTIN MYERS: I want to ask about something that we see a lot of folks doing already. And we now have some more comments from Dr. Fauci, which is around double masking and how this might be a critical move really to help fight against this virus, at least as you've been inoculated and you have yet to be inoculated against coronavirus. I'm wondering what your thoughts are, if we really now need to, just everyone, be double masking as a matter of course in order to prevent the spread.
HOWARD FORMAN: I think anything that reduces our ability to spread to others is going to be helpful. So remember, the masking argument is much more about me spreading to you than about protecting myself with the masks, although it's probably in both directions. You know, there's a lot of arguments about what two masks mean. If I'm wearing N95 surrounded by a general surgical mask, that's very different than if I'm wearing two cloth masks.
But anything that you're doing that is going to be protecting your ability to either spray or aerosolize your own air to others, I think is doing a little bit of help at a time that we don't have enough information. And I think we continue, even one year into this, to need to be humble. Humility is our friend. We need to acknowledge that we don't know all the answers. But if we try to do sensible approaches, we're at least on the right track to reducing hospitalizations and deaths.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Dr. Forman, I want to ask you a little bit about-- going back to the vaccine supply for a second. Because I know that there is a lot of discussion around places holding back some of their supply for second doses, not being able to trust the government rollout. Meanwhile, we just got results out of AstraZeneca saying that a three-month gap resulted in a still positive protection. So is there something to be said about that? Should sites not be concerned about holding a reserve for second doses?
HOWARD FORMAN: Yeah, so I'll say the simplest thing to me is, any dose that's being held in a refrigerator for more than a couple of days with the hope of giving it to somebody a week from now is denying somebody or even the population of protection and presumably saving lives. I mean, we should get it in arms now to save lives.
Now, I personally think the best evidence we have right now is that we give the second dose as soon as possible. But there are arguments that could be made that if you stretched it a week, there's going to be no harm from that. The AstraZeneca trial that we just talked about might even suggest it even gets better by delaying it a little bit of time. But we don't have evidence from Moderna and Pfizer. So let's just put that aside for a moment.
But the low hanging fruit that we do have says if somebody has been previously infected with coronavirus, they might only need one shot. We have some evidence about that already. That might be one way to expand the supply. Another is to say, get them into the arms now. And if you have to cancel any type of shots, don't cancel the second shots, but cancel the first shots.
Now that's going to disrupt state and local distribution plans, but far better to cancel shots a week from now than to be holding back shots this week when we know we're going to be getting increasing supplies over the next few weeks. So I'm in favor of getting as many shots in arms as you feasibly can, as quickly as you can.
KRISTIN MYERS: All right, Dr. Howard Forman, Yale professor of radiology and public health, Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani, thank you both for joining us for this very important conversation about this ongoing pandemic.