'We still need to go even above and beyond the 70% threshold’ on vaccinations: Doctor

Dr. Cedric Dark, Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine & Board Member with Doctors for America, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic.

Video Transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. President Joe Biden has a goal of getting 70% of adults vaccinated by July 4. And nationwide, we're at about 63%. Some states are still below 50%-- Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, Louisiana. And at the current pacing of vaccination for those states, it could take 7 to 12 months to reach 70%. So to discuss this more, we've got Dr. Cedric Dark at Baylor College of Medicine.

He's also a board member with Doctors for America. And, Dr. Dark, I want to ask you-- in terms of the idea for vaccination here, it's kind of like a point of diminishing returns where each person that you're now vaccinating is going to be that much harder to inoculate than the last person that you vaccinated. So how difficult is it going to be to get to what you might call the last mile in some of those states that are lagging here?

CEDRIC DARK: Well, it may be harder to reach that last person or the next person, rather, because I think that we still need to go even above and beyond the 70% threshold. But let's go back a little bit and think about what happened prior-- the beginning of this pandemic, Joe Biden came into office and said, let's do 100 million shots in 100 days. And he achieved that a month early. This administration is already delivering well on the promise of ending this pandemic, and is doing such a great job that we are going to be really close to hitting this new goal of 70% of Americans having their first shot by July 4.

As you said during your introduction, there are a lot of states, especially in the Deep South, that are really low in terms of their vaccination rates relative to other states-- less than 50%. And what we need to see is increased effort in those states. One of the things I found very interesting when looking at these data is that the states that have also forgotten to expand Medicaid or refuse to expand Medicaid, those are among the states-- every last one of them is expected to fail achieving this threshold. And it makes me think, like, are these politicians in these states out there not only-- not trying to give their citizens health care, but maybe not trying to make sure they're healthy in the first place? It's really concerning.

KRISTIN MYERS: I'm curious to know, doctor-- how big of a deal it truly is if we do miss that July 4 deadline, especially considering, as you mentioned, all of the other successes that we have achieved, all the other goals that we have hit? And given where we are right now, some states doing incredibly well-- Vermont is one of them, at least when it comes to the vaccination rates-- so as a whole right now, how do you perceive the country of the United States in terms of tackling this pandemic?

CEDRIC DARK: As a whole, we're pretty close to getting to this goal. I think that we will continue to get closer to tackling the pandemic as long as we keep pushing forward with initiatives to reach people where they are. So one of the things that I've noticed in recent days, a "USA Today" had a great article out talking about the Shots at the Shop initiative, which is reaching out to 1,000 Black-owned barber shops and beauty salons trying to make those vaccine hubs for people in the African-American community. What we need to do is similar things like that where we're actually taking shots to people in their communities where they are and taking health care to where people are.

BRIAN CHEUNG: Dr Dark, I want to ask about vaccinating those that are not adults. We've actually seen hospitalization rates for adolescents go up in March and April. So what should a proper approach be, especially given the fact that some of these vaccine providers are still kind of assessing what the impact is on the younger people?

CEDRIC DARK: Well, right now, everybody above the age of 12 should be able to receive a vaccine and should be actively trying to get that. If we want to get our kids back in school, especially middle schoolers and high schoolers, we should get them vaccinated so they can go back to school like normal-- like pre-pandemic times. We still have to wait a little bit, because studies are being done in younger children like the six-month to 11-year-old crowd.

And so we'll have to wait and see what happens there. But hopefully as the research comes out, it will hopefully show us a similar safetiness and efficacy with those vaccines in that younger population as well.

KRISTIN MYERS: How long-- Brian was mentioning in that introduction that it might take seven-- over seven months for some of these states that are still lagging behind. But just as a whole as a country, how long do you think it will take us to hit some of those target figures that President Biden has set

CEDRIC DARK: Well, for some of those states there they're about to hit those numbers right around the corner this week, next week, perhaps, in places like Washington state, New York, Washington, DC, Vermont, like you mentioned. Other states could take up to seven months or longer, which stretches us into 2022 for some of those places in the Deep South before they're able to really get back to life as usual. And so I think in those states, the effort has to be on how can we get more shots in arms.

BRIAN CHEUNG: All right, well, Dr. Cedric Dark, again, from Baylor College of Medicine and a board member with Doctors for America, thank you so much for joining us here on Yahoo Finance.