COVID-19 'Pool testing' in schools would give insight on how well masks in schools are doing: Dr. Dara Kass

Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi discuss the latest news on the COVID-19 vaccine front with Yahoo Medical Contributor, Dr. Dara Kass.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: The coronavirus pandemic was topic number one at last night's presidential debate as infections are now on the rise in nearly every state, especially in the Midwest right now. And yesterday, the FDA approved Gilead's anti-viral remdesivir to treat COVID-19 patients. Shares of Gilead, by the way, up about 4% here in the free market.

Joining us now is Dr. Dara Kass, Yahoo Medical Contributor and Columbia University Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Kass, good Friday morning to you. So talk to us about remdesivir, because we know that it was already being used to some extent as a treatment for COVID-19. How important is this actual FDA approval in the fight against the infection?

DARA KASS: It's actually not that important for patient care, in so far as all it's saying is that the continued use of the EUA, the emergency use authorization, and the studies that came out prove that this medication was effective in patients who are hospitalized and sick from this coronavirus-- over the age of 12 is what it was approved for. So now there's just more availability of this medication, and there's less restriction going forward. It is now officially approved by the FDA for use for this disease, remembering that it does not change mortality. It's not saving lives. It's just decreasing hospitalizations and decreasing symptoms.

BRIAN SOZZI: Dr. Kass, yesterday we had on Southwest CEO Gary Kelly. They're now going to start packing out their planes, if people are even going to fly. Is that safe that they're now selling all their seats again?

DARA KASS: So what I was really impressed with that announcement was actually how they announced how they came to that decision. In fact, Southwest Airlines put out a full Twitter thread explaining how they came to that decision, based on the data available from transmissions on planes, and I think that that's exactly what we need to see. If a company is going to make a decision that seems counterintuitive, as long as they explain the science behind their decision, and not just that it was a let's see what happens decision, I think that's OK, and I think it can be considered as safe as keeping that middle seat open. So I actually think they did a good job with that.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, during the debate last night, a lot of it was about the coronavirus and how the Trump administration has been handling, how a Biden administration would be handling it, and President Trump, again, talked about having a vaccine sooner rather than later, saying we could have something, we will have something by the end of the year. And he called out a few companies, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer. From what you're seeing and you're hearing in the medical community, how accurate is that?

DARA KASS: So remembering that he actually called it a vaccine that seems to be almost ready for prime time that's on pause right now from the safety data, so I think that his declarations about the proximity of a vaccine are certainly as hopeful and as, as he's been for every other thing, not really grounded in the science and the data. We do know that both the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine are continuing their Phase 3 clinical trials and that we expect the Pfizer vaccine to come out with some data at the end of November and Moderna in December, both of them agreeing to this two month period after the completion of their Phase 3 clinical trials, waiting for other efficacy and safety data to come through completely, and the FDA is in support of that.

So no, we're not very close to a vaccine just yet, and more importantly, even if we see the candidate, or multiple candidates, that look effective and safe, getting them into the arms of Americans and having people trust this vaccine is a good idea for them to take is still another hurdle that we haven't, we haven't even begun to address.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, Dr. Kass, what does that process look like? Because the president appears to be under the assumption they hand the vaccine off to the military, and poof, it's at our house.

DARA KASS: Right, so a lot of the assumptions the president makes about both the willingness of people to take the vaccine and the execution of how this vaccine is distributed, remembering that the Moderna vaccine, for example, is an mRNA vaccine that is contained at sub zero temperatures, so we need to make sure that the vaccine candidate that comes forward will be able to be implemented and distributed widely. And there's a lot of steps in the middle of approving a vaccine and deciding it's safe and effective to getting it into American arms, and unfortunately, that data usually has escaped the president when he declares that we're almost there for distribution.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: And we keep talking about testing. Testing has become more robust in this country, but how important is it? How can we use it, perhaps in ways we're not using it now, or more effectively, maybe, I should say, in helping to get the economy and schools back up and running to as close to 100% as we can get? Because I've been reading that we may be wearing masks until at least 2022, when I think there's just a lot of fatigue already in this country about wearing masks. We hear something like that, I think it really makes people feel like they're behind the eight ball.

DARA KASS: Right, so I think the use of data-- we're underutilizing the data we have, and we're not really being transparent about what's working, which I think is unfortunate, right? And schools are a great example. So if we could do pool testing, which means that every kid in a school is tested, sometimes with saliva. It's all put into one big testing pool, and then you find the positive cases, and you do it regularly. We could see how well the masks and the small classrooms are doing, and we could even increase, in theory, the size of the classes, if we know that we can find those cases early, take those kids out of the classroom, isolate them, and prove very specifically that we're not seeing transmission amongst student to student or even students to teacher.

But that requires a lot of investment in testing and infrastructure and ventilation and in data. And unfortunately, we're just not seeing this administration invest in that set of work, and that's why we're really behind the eight ball when it comes to, well, just keep wearing masks. That's basically all they're telling us to do.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, Dr. Dara Kass, thanks for putting it in perspective for us. See you next week.

DARA KASS: See you next week.