Dr. Ashish Jha told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” on Tuesday that US states could begin making decisions about opening businesses and economies sooner than expected if enough people were vaccinated.
“My relatively optimistic view is that we don’t have to wait until the end of summer or even the beginning of summer, that by the end of spring, if enough people have been vaccinated, you will start to really see the number of cases go down a lot,” Jha said. who is the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, “This will allow us to start opening up the economy a lot more, so we don’t have to wait and we just have to make sure that the infections – the high levels of infection we have now, that this is improving. “
President Joe Biden has set a critical milestone in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He promised to provide the states with enough doses of vaccine for almost every American by the end of the summer. Biden said the government would have 200 million more doses of the vaccine – half from Pfizer and half from Moderna. The agreement would increase the nation’s vaccine supply to 600 million photos.
“There is enough vaccine to completely vaccinate 300 [million] Americans by the end of summer, the beginning of autumn, “Biden said at the White House on Tuesday.
To vaccinate 300 million people by September 22, the last day of summer, the nation will need 600 million doses at a rate of about 2.4 million photos a day. This assumes that it exceeds the 23 million already blocked. Biden said the government will start delivering 10 million fires a week to the states in the next three weeks. This is an increase of almost 20% compared to what is currently being delivered.
Johnson & Johnson is waiting result on the Covid vaccine until early next week. According to CNBC’s Meg Tirrell, the company conducted its trial on three continents, including South Africa and Brazil, where new highly transmissible variants were identified. This means that the Johnson & Johnson results could reveal important information about how vaccines designed around the original Covid strain act against emerging ones.
Dr. Bruce Becker, assistant professor of behavioral medicine and social sciences at Brown University School of Public Health, told The News with Shepard Smith that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires a single shot and therefore immunity is achieved between 14 and 21 days.
The J&J vaccine can vaccinate twice the number of patients for each given supply of the vaccine – twice the coverage and immunity in less than half the time, Becker said. “This is a much higher efficiency for blocking Covid’s spread.”
Jha told host Shepard Smith that a single dose would help “a lot” in the vaccination effort, but questioned the company’s production capacity.
“I think one of the less clear questions is how much J&J vaccine stock do we have?” Jha asked. “There are some reports that it didn’t go as well, production didn’t go as well, but in any case, a dose like a vaccine is much easier to administer.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study on Tuesday that said the spread of Covid in schools is very low, with the right precautions. Jha explained that the US can open schools across the country, but “we have to do it” with preventive measures in place that include masks and effective ventilation.
Becker stressed the importance of preventive measures and even said that non-compliant students should be banned from school.
“The masking work, the social distancing work and the deadly misinformation that was spread by the previous administration and its voices have led to our current dilemma,” Becker said. “Schools can be opened if the rules are followed to the maximum.”
Biden said Tuesday that “it will take months before we can vaccinate most Americans” and that “masks, not vaccines,” are the best defense against Covid, while Americans wait for their vaccine.