The FDA has ‘a lot of positive things to look at’ with AstraZeneca vaccine: Doctor

Dr. Manish Garg, Emergency Medicine Physician & Co-Founder of World Academic Council of Emergency Medicine, joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers to discuss the latest coronavirus vaccine updates.

Video Transcript

KRISTIN MYERS: I want to bring in Dr. Manish Garg. He's an emergency medicine physician and co-founder of the World Academic Council of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Garg, always a pleasure to have you with us. There's a lot to get into that we just heard about from Anjalee. I do want to start with those cases that we have spiking not just in New York, New Jersey, elsewhere. Curious to know if you think that perhaps officials reopened a little bit too early in some of their states.

MANISH GARG: Well, hi, Kristin. It's so great to see you. Thank you for having me on the show again. And the views expressed are my own. So I would say to your question about this winter, the weather is beautiful, out right now. And you kind of know in the East Coast when the first beautiful stretch of weather comes out, you still can't, like, put away all of your coats and your snow blowers and all that stuff, because, you know, there's probably something coming. And that's what I think we're seeing here.

We have about a quarter of the US population that's had about a single dose. An eighth have been fully vaccinated. The national case rates have plateaued, but just under a third of the states, like you're mentioning-- I think there was about 15 different states-- have more cases than a few weeks ago. And what we know is that hospitalizations tend to lag two weeks later, and deaths tend to lag two weeks later after that. And that's happening while we are beginning to loosen restrictions.

Certainly, as a front line doctor who works in three different hospitals in New York City, I can say that we're seeing about a 6 and 1/2% in a couple of the hospitals that I've seen of all patients who are coming with COVID, and that number is still pretty high. About 14% of the patients that get admitted to our hospital have COVID. So the numbers are not at the point at which we want to get people to kind of reduce and loosen restrictions like you're talking about and like Anjalee Khemlani discussed.

KRISTIN MYERS: OK, so speaking of reopening, I have to ask you about some of the videos-- I'm not sure if you have seen them-- I have definitely seen them-- of folks in Florida. Now this is both spring breakers, college students that are out enjoying themselves on the beaches, but also what seems to be a lot of adults that are coming in from other states. A lot of Floridians have hopped on social media and said that is not us. We like to avoid South Beach. Typically, these are folks coming in from other states, other cities.

I mean, look at these images. This is incredible. All of these people out without masks. What are your concerns? Or what do you think is the inevitable conclusion of so many people, even though they are outside, being around each other, maskless? This seems to me a super spreader type of incident. Are you seeing it the same way?

MANISH GARG: Yes, Kristin, I'm seeing it the same way. And look, I think we all get it. Like, people have been-- they're tired, they're frustrated. It's been a year now where we've had some version of home quarantine or just these safety precautions. But this is when it's really, really important for us to stay vigilant. I know people want to get away. They want to relax. They want to spend time with their friends.

There's a couple of problems that these types of events and these pictures really bring to mind in those of us who are trying to advocate for public health. It's that, one, the messaging in some of our states has just been incongruent with what public health experts have said. And, two, the behaviors that people are showing are not really-- they're high risk behaviors.

And one thing that's particularly concerning about Miami is that it's an international hub. So there's folks coming from all around. If you've taken any travel and you've gone south either to Central or South America, you've probably had to go through Miami. So there's a number of people. And we know that lots of people are traveling right now.

So one of the things that I'm really concerned about is that you have a potential super spreader event. You've got folks that have the potential to travel either back to their states after they spend some time. They can unfortunately pick up COVID while they're down in Miami, and then they can bring it back to their different states.

Similarly, you've got folks that could potentially go into different parts of the world, and you've got people coming in, in areas where we know that some of the variants have come, like Brazil. And so it is concerning in that strange way that these are super spreader events. And I'm worried that the case counts are going to go up. And it might even be misleading because if people are traveling to Miami and then back to their homes, the case counts may be a little bit lower or closer to normal in Miami, but actually higher once they-- you know, higher in the other states that people are returning to. I looked at--

KRISTIN MYERS: So then--

MANISH GARG: --some of the data specifically-- oh, OK. Sorry, go ahead.

KRISTIN MYERS: No, I was just wondering. So then, doctor, we heard Anjalee saying just a moment ago that the cases were declining bu then plateauing, but that the level that they were plateauing at was a little bit too high, higher than, of course, we would want it.

So then when you have folks doing like what they're doing in Florida and probably also doing elsewhere in other states and in other cities, does this say to you that perhaps that we're not actually out of the woods, we actually haven't turned the corner, that we are going to see these cases start to spike, another wave potentially coming?

MANISH GARG: Yeah, unfortunately, I hate always coming on, Kristin, and sharing some news of hypervigilance and some worry, but I think that's what we are seeing. When you looked at Miami's testing positivity, it's about 8.6% testing positivity. And again, those numbers are higher than what we would want for our kids in school, what we'd want for the general [AUDIO OUT] to 90% is the more infectious rate of the B117 variant that we know from the UK.

And that's made up about 30% to 40% of the US infections from data that's been reported. The Miami finding of that particular variant is somewhere around 50%. So, you know, we've learned that that particular variant now is associated with a slightly increased risk of death as well. And we know that it's much more highly contagious. And so there's about a 64% more relative increase with that particular variant. So all of those confluence of factors make us really worried about what's happening in Miami, but then also other hotspots like New York and LA and other places where we could potentially have new variants.

KRISTIN MYERS: So I want to ask then about the AstraZeneca vaccine. As we heard on Anjalee updating us, there are some very positive signs, at least in terms of its efficacy rate. How do we get folks, however, to overcome, or how do you, as a doctor, overcome that vaccine hesitancy? Because all of the headlines that we've seen around AstraZeneca, at least lately, have not been positive. It's been about country after country suspending use of the vaccine because of those blood clots. Do you feel that the vaccine is safe?

MANISH GARG: I do feel that the vaccine is safe, at least in what's reported in kind of this pre-release. So we have to wait for all of the data to come out so that we can review it and know it is for sure. But if you compare it, the 79% is efficacy-- and also remember that that was done in places like the UK, where the variant was there. It was done in South Africa where the variant was there. So that number originally might be lower.

But the most important number that they're sharing is the 100% for severe cases. And that's what we're most concerned about when we talk about hospitalizations and we talk about deaths. So, to me, that is a really good number. And I think, unfortunately, the AstraZeneca vaccine has had a rocky road, particularly in Europe.

And it's nice to see on Friday that a number of world leaders in different countries in Europe are now saying no, it's OK. We should take the vaccine. And the European Medicines Agency reaffirmed their endorsement and commitment. And I think that that's really, really important because we have to have confidence in more options, particularly with this vaccine, because this is a vaccine that we would like to give to low and middle income countries, as we know that if you have coronavirus that's growing in other parts of the world, it necessarily affects what's happening with us in the United States for some of the reasons that I discussed earlier.

So we know that the blood clot issue, there was, I think, 37 cases in 17 million, which is, like, such a low, low number, which is less than the general population, so that's safe. And then the other issue about greater than 65 years old, those patients seemed to be doing really well, as Anjalee brought up, too. So typically, it's taken about a month from the time when the emergency authorization use has been issued in the United States. And I think the FDA has a lot of positive things to look at now with this vaccine.

KRISTIN MYERS: Definitely a lot of positive news. Dr. Manish Garg, emergency medicine physician and co-founder of the World Academic Council of Emergency Medicine, thanks so much for joining us.