We’re above our 50% goal of meeting that nat’l vaccination target of over 100m vaccinations by the end of April: Harvard Global Health Institute

Dr. Tom Tsai, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute; Assistant Professor in Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health joins with the latest COVID-19 update.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Johnson & Johnson moving a step closer to getting approval for its COVID-19 vaccine-- the FDA backing the drugmaker's own study which showed the single-dose vaccine was 66% effective. All of this is coming as we continue to see a rapid decline in COVID-19 deaths as well as cases. And we're really starting to see the impact of that in nursing homes that were really first in line for the vaccine.

The latest data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project pointing to a dramatic decline in deaths linked to long-term care facilities. Let's bring in Dr. Tom Tsai. He is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute. Doctor Tsai, it's good to talk to you today. Let's start with the developments on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This is pretty much confirming what the company has already said about its vaccine, but as we move a step closer to getting the green light for a single-dose vaccine, how significantly do you think that will ramp up the rate of vaccinations right now?

TOM TSAI: Akiko, thank you for having me on. I think that news from the Johnson & Johnson and the FDA today is really excellent news and very encouraging news. Overall, we're above our 50% goal in terms of meeting that national vaccination target of over 100 million vaccinations by the end of April that the Biden administration has set out. Now with a third vaccine available, it will only increase the likelihood that we'll be able to meet that goal and really be able to suppress the pandemic as we go into the summer.

The efficacy is pretty good for the J&J vaccine at 66% overall, but the United States about 72%. Keep in mind, before the excellent news from Moderna and Pfizer, most studies were estimating around approval for a vaccine that was about 70% effective. So I think we are just recalibrating to just the really excellent initial results from Pfizer and Moderna, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is not just adequate, but more importantly, it can help truly prevent severe cases of COVID-19, prevent hospitalizations and deaths, which are, in this phase, the most important metrics to consider.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, it's important to tease that out when we're talking about efficacy on the vaccine front. It's also interesting to kind of couch this as vaccine race versus cases race, but also the variants that we've been watching as well. I know your guys' department has been looking at a new variant in California . There is that one as well as the UK variant, South Africa-- there's a lot out there. So how important is the race to get the vaccine out to prevent some of those variants that could even be down the road from happening in the first place? What are you seeing on the variant front?

TOM TSAI: It's incredibly important, Zack. The vaccinations are a key part of the strategy. And while they may have slightly reduced effectiveness with some of the newer variants, they are still overall very effective in producing the severe complications, such as hospitalizations and deaths. So first and foremost, the vaccination strategy, rolling that out widely is important regardless of the variants.

The other part is that we've been seeing cases go down across the United States, hospitalizations go down. We're seeing our deaths go down as well. And all this is very encouraging. And the other part is that we've been focusing on not just widespread masking across our communities, but also better masking and better ventilation.

So all these mitigation measures that had been working for the last year, they can still work with the new variants. So that layered strategy that's been a big public health focus over the last year still remains critically important. We have now an even more powerful tool with the vaccines available, so this is a time to really keep the foot on the pedal and continue to accelerate our public health interventions, our adherence to masking, including better masking, double-masking, or even NE5 respirator masks if they're available, continued vigilance around maintaining good physical distancing, good ventilation, and doors, and then couple that with widespread vaccine rollout.

But the vaccination news today is very encouraging. It's a newer modality that requires a single dose-- and very enthusiastic by the pace of the vaccine rollout that we've seen over the last several weeks.

AKIKO FUJITA: We saw a lot of resistance initially in vaccines and long-term care facilities when you compare it to how quickly things moved along in hospitals. And yet this new data that we just pointed to out from the COVID Tracking Project seems to suggest that we have seen the rate of deaths from COVID-19 in these nursing homes down at a very dramatic rate. What does that tell you about the timeline with which we're likely to reach herd immunity? I know we're talking just one sector here, but there was so much focus there, largely because of the elderly, as well as the outbreaks that we saw in the early days of the pandemic.

TOM TSAI: Yeah. Akiko, I think part of the concern early on was that with the initial focus on health care settings, there was actually a slight delay in ramping up the pharmacy partnerships with vaccinations to the long-term care facilities. However, really over the last month, we've seen the vaccination rates increase significantly in the long-term care facilities.

Now over 6.6 million vaccinations have occurred in long-term care facilities, and that's not just for the residents, but also, importantly, for the nursing home staff that work there. So initially, the rates there were a little bit lower, but we're seeing those rates start to increase as well. So that two-pronged approach of focusing vaccinations on the residents in the congregate settings and long-term facilities, as well as the staff who work there, and then potentially can transmit the virus from a community back into those long-term care facilities-- breaking that chain of transmission to vaccine with the vaccines is incredibly important. And we're making a really good progress on that front.

So I think that is a strategy that will continue to play an important role. And it's encouraging to see that number start to change, not just from vaccinations-- we see that from a real meaningful outcome for individuals, which is seeing the cases go down and the deaths go down.

ZACK GUZMAN: Dr. Tsai, real quick before we let you go, we had a guest on yesterday talking about the push and the importance of getting vaccines out to the developing world as well to prevent more variants from coming, and the costs that could come with more lockdowns around that if that variant were to spread around the world. How important does the J&J vaccine maybe play a part in that considering the cold chain, and how real is that risk for the US and other developed countries out there too?

TOM TSAI: I'll answer the second question first, which is that it really is a real risk. We've learned over the course of this year that no country is an island from the sense of being able to truly protect yourself from the transmission of new variants, and especially as travel is increasing with air travel. That global perspective, as opposed to just a national perspective, is important to consider.

So this is a global fight against a pandemic, not just country by country. And the global vaccination strategy also has to follow in place. Initially, it was concerns because of the cold chain requirements for Pfizer and Moderna, that there would be limited applications to lower-resourced settings. And the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, including some of the other ones on the pipeline that don't require the cold chain, the very cold freezers or even being single-dose being easier to administer, all these are important factors that will increase the supply to other countries around the world. And the WHO collaborative around COVAX and the plans by many developed countries to allocate a portion to the rest of the world is incredibly important.

ZACK GUZMAN: Absolutely. All right, we'll leave that there. Dr. Tom Tsai, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute, appreciate you coming on here to chat with us today.