'Mass vaccination sites… are really kind of reaching their maximum point': Doctor

Emergency Medicine Physician & Assistant Professor at Baylor University Dr. Michael Gonzalez joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down his thoughts on the best approach to reopening.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: So I'm going to bring in Dr. Michael Gonzales. He's the emergency medicine physician and assistant professor at Baylor College. Thank you for coming, by the way. Thank you for joining us. We've seen these reopenings take different courses in various parts of the United States. How is it going in Texas right now?

MICHAEL GONZALEZ: Thanks, Adam. Thanks for having me. Yes, there's certainly a lot of confusion and some mixed signals around how we're doing this. Texas, in particular, has been very aggressive from a State leadership position in terms of opening up both public venues, much to the concern of a lot of health care experts like myself. We've been very fortunate in the most recent data that we haven't seen a significant spike, partly due to this increased and really reliable, heroic effort to get vaccines pushed out there to everyone, every single person who wants it.

- Doctor, what do you think of Michigan's plan? They unveiled a plan earlier this week tying the reopening strategy to the number of vaccinations in the State. Does that type of strategy make sense to you?

MICHAEL GONZALEZ: I think that there's a lot of potential benefits to that. I think that really, we have identified that this particular virus is a very difficult challenge that is unprecedented in the world. And so strategies that really emphasize getting the vaccine, which is single-handedly our best effort to prevent mass infections like what is occurring in India and some other countries.

I think that that's a really smart way to approach this. The data is still out. This is all experimentation, and really, we're going to have to watch this data carefully, but I do think having a metric-based or milestone-based approach is the way to approach this.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, let me ask you, we were just talking to Anjalee Khemlani about the vaccine supply and demand picture. I just want to get your take on it on the ground there at Baylor.

MICHAEL GONZALEZ: Yeah, so I think that this remains the biggest challenge in the United States. We have a significant percentage of our communities, both here in Texas as well as other parts of our nation, that are hesitant to get that vaccine. And I think that as this represents the number one really missile, really the number one weapon that we have against this virus, we're going to have to reach out in different ways.

And I think that means making the vaccine even more available than it is. I think a lot of the mass vaccination sites that have been launched all over the country are really reaching their maximum point, and I think there is some opportunity to continue to push the vaccine out in non-traditional areas, our drugstores and community centers and various efforts that go all the way out into the communities, particularly those communities that we know are hardest struck by this virus.

- Doctor, we have the White House restricting travel from India starting next week, another record day of cases in the country, more than 380,000. What more can the US do to better assist and better help India at this time?

MICHAEL GONZALEZ: Yeah, I think this is a challenge that, as I said, we've never seen anything like this. And 380,000 cases are more in a single day, and it's probably an undercount in India, should be a cause for global concern. And so among the health care community, I think there's a real concern and desire for there to be a more concerted worldwide effort, something akin to what could only be compared to like a Berlin airlift model where the entire world literally steps forward and tries to assist.

Because a small fire, not to minimize the impact of this, but a fire, to use an analogy of fire in India, is putting out a fire in one part of the world that is this large though, is a little bit like putting out the fire in your front yard when your house is on fire. And so we really need to focus, as some of the more medically advanced areas of the world, we really need to focus our resources.

And so I know the Biden administration has been talking in direct contact with that part of the world to really increase our efforts. I think vaccine distribution, potentially considering increasing manufacture of both raw products as well as some of the discussion behind those vaccine patents needs to move forward.

ADAM SHAPIRO: We've got just about a minute here, 30 seconds. Are things returning to normal? Are people coming in for regular scheduled medical procedures now, finally?

MICHAEL GONZALEZ: Thanks for that question. That is absolutely what we are seeing. I worked last night. I apologize for maybe being a little sleepy this morning, but we are absolutely seeing a return to near normal pre-pandemic volumes in our emergency department. And we're seeing a mix of both still COVID presentations. It is very much still a real concern in our community, as well as a variety of the things that we handle each and every day in our emergency departments.

Heart attacks, strokes, those different concerns are absolutely at their baseline, and I think that's being seen throughout the United States.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, thank you Dr. Michael Gonzalez, emergency medicine physician and assistant professor at Baylor College.