"A big hit to the vaccine campaign": Doctor on Johnson & Johnson's vaccine delivery plunge

Suzanne Judd, Epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, joined Yahoo Finance to discuss the latest on covid-19.

Video transcript

EMILY MCCORMICK: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. I'm Emily McCormick. New COVID-19 cases are back on the rise in the US, despite the latest push to get more individuals vaccinated. Data from The New York Times showing that new cases have averaged more than 66,000 per day over the last week. That's a rise of 13% from the average two weeks ago. Joining us now to discuss is Dr. Suzanne Judd, epidemiologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham School of Public Health.

And Dr. Judd, I want to ask about the vaccine rollout specifically, because the Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that Johnson & Johnson vaccine deliveries to other states are expected to plunge to just 700,000 next week from 4.9 million doses allocated this past week. And I'm wondering, given the pace of vaccinations right now, can the US afford this kind of dropoff? And will doses from Pfizer, as well as Moderna, be able to pick up some of the slack?

SUZANNE JUDD: They definitely are picking up some of the slack, but it's not enough. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was really desirable, especially among young people. And all states are now offering vaccine to people 16 and up. And the younger folks just like the idea of one dose. So that's a big hit in terms of the vaccine campaign. Hopefully, it doesn't last longer than three or four weeks and they can get their manufacturing back up again. But it is a hit.

SEANA SMITH: We mentioned the higher case count across the US. Michigan is getting hit pretty hard right now. We heard Governor Whitmer. She was out renewing her call for the government to send more J&J vaccines to Michigan. She was saying that we should be sending more vaccines to states that are experiencing this serious outbreak. Is this something that the government should be doing, allocating more vaccines to those hard hit states?

SUZANNE JUDD: I would love to see us do that. I would love to see us have a campaign where we do specifically go after states that are embroiled in a bit more of a high case count. It's critical that we slow this down to ease burden on hospitals. But the challenge is that other states will say, no, that's not fair. The cases may come here next. So that's a really tough one politically. But from a data or from a disease control standpoint, it would be nice if we would send vaccine to places that are in the middle of the hardest push with cases right now.

EMILY MCCORMICK: And doctor, keeping in line with the topic of these hotspots in the US right now, the fact that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been calling for a, quote, voluntary compliance rather than a mandate to suspend in-person high school classes, youth sports, and indoor dining for two weeks, it seems like perhaps states are a bit hesitant now to reimpose some of those draconian stay-in-place orders, while other states are trying to reopen. And I'm wondering if perhaps Michigan and other states like Florida and these hot spots do need these more stringent lockdowns in order to get these cases back under control.

SUZANNE JUDD: The only way that we've been able to control it in the past are with stringent lockdowns. I just don't think that the population wants those anymore. So the governor of Michigan is really stuck up against a rock and a hard place to try to get people to voluntarily comply. And she's probably in the right to do that. But again, from a disease management standpoint, we know that the mandatory lockdowns do work a little bit better.

SEANA SMITH: When we take a look at some of the protocols that the colleges and universities are laying out here nationwide, some are insisting that college students be vaccinated before they return to campus. We also had that idea of a vaccine passport. From your perspective, from a public health perspective, how helpful do you think that would be just to ensuring the safety of everyone, no matter where they go, whether it's back to school, whether it's into a restaurant, or whether it's on a plane?

SUZANNE JUDD: Oh, it's absolutely critical. And the college, the higher ed, that's the place we want to go to. That's the place we really want to push a vaccine. Why? Because those are populations that are cohabiting. They're intermingling in their space. They're getting to know brand new people they've never met before. And then they go back home. So they're a very migratory population. They're among the most migratory in the nation. So getting them vaccinated is really key to our success in the fall.

The challenge is that we don't have full authorization from the FDA yet, which means that lots of the public institutions can't mandate the vaccine until we have-- it goes off emergency use authorization. Once that happens the universities can start to mandate the vaccine, which that's the way, again, to get compliance. It's exactly what we were talking about with mandatory lockdowns. When you make it mandatory, that's how you get people to comply.

EMILY MCCORMICK: And Dr. Judd, I actually want to talk a little bit about the international vaccine rollout. Because according to an analysis from Bloomberg this morning, countries with the highest incomes are vaccinating 20 times faster than those with the lowest incomes. And for instance, they gave the data point that the US has about 24% of the world's vaccinations, but just 4.3% of the population. And I'm wondering if this unevenness with this vaccine rollout globally presents the risk that variants will be able to emerge internationally and potentially make their way here to the US as well.

SUZANNE JUDD: There's the variant question, but there's also the question of equity. A lot of these countries experience high volume for tourism as the wealthier countries go to, say, the Caribbean or to South America to vacation. And if the wealthier countries, the folks from there are vaccinated, and they go to the countries that haven't had as much access to vaccine, we run the risk of continuing to spread COVID-19 and then the variants that can pop up from it. So absolutely, this is one of the biggest challenges we have globally. The fact that the vaccine is not being equitably distributed, it will lead to complications in the next six to nine months.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Certainly something for us to keep an eye on. But Dr. Suzanne Judd, epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, thank you so much. Coming up, Amazon workers in Alabama have voted against forming a union. We'll discuss with Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley after the--