Dr. Ashish Jha told CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith on Tuesday that “US states can decide to open businesses and economies sooner rather than later if enough people are vaccinated.”
“My relatively optimistic view is that we do not have to wait until the end of summer or even the beginning of summer; that by late spring, if enough people have been vaccinated, your case numbers will really go down a lot,” he said. Jha, who is dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said. ‘ It will enable us to start opening up the economy a lot more, so that we do not have to wait, and we just have to make sure that the infections – the high levels of infection we currently have – get better. ‘
President Joe Biden sets a critical benchmark in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He promised to deliver enough vaccine doses to nearly every American by the end of the summer. Biden said he would vaccinate the government with 200 million more doses, half from Pfizer and half from Moderna. The deal would increase the country’s vaccine supply to 600 million shots.
‘It’s enough vaccine to vaccinate 300 completely [million] “Americans by the end of summer, the beginning of autumn,” Biden said in the White House on Tuesday.
To vaccinate 300 million people by September 22, the last day of summer, the country will need 600 million doses at a rate of about 2.4 million shots per day. It is assumed that this is more than the 23 million already determined. Biden said the government will start sending 10 million shots a week for the next three weeks. This is an increase of almost 20% compared to what is currently being delivered.
Johnson & Johnson Expected results on the Covid vaccine by early next week. According to CNBC’s Meg Tirrell, the company held its trials across three continents, including South Africa and Brazil, where the highly transferable new variants were identified. This means that the Johnson & Johnson results could reveal important information about how vaccines around the original Covid strain work against the emerging drugs.
Dr Bruce Becker, assistant professor of behavioral medicine and social sciences at Brown University’s School of Public Health, told The News with Shepard Smith that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot and that immunity is therefore achieved in 14 to 21 days.
“The J&J vaccine can vaccinate twice the number of patients for each given vaccination – twice the coverage and immunity in less than half the time,” Becker said. “It’s much more efficient for blocking the distribution of Covid.”
Jha told host Shepard Smith that a single dose would help the vaccination effort ‘a lot’, but questioned the company’s production capacity.
“I think one of the less obvious questions is how much stock do our J&J vaccine have?” asked Jha. “There are some reports that it has not gone so well, that the production has not gone so well, but whatever it is, one dose as a vaccine is so much easier to administer.”
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention on Tuesday released a study stating that the distribution 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 preventative measures that include masks and effective ventilation.
Becker stressed the importance of preventative measures and even said that students who do not meet the requirements should be banned from school.
“Masking, social distancing, and the deadly misinformation propagated by the previous government and its voices has led to our current dilemma,” Becker said. “Schools can be opened if the rules are followed to the letter.”
Biden said on Tuesday “it will take months before we can get the majority of Americans vaccinated” and that “masks not vaccines” are the best defense against Covid because Americans are waiting for their vaccination.