Vaccine trials on pregnant women show reassuring results: Doctor

Dr. Kathleen Jordan, SVP of Medical Affairs at Tia, joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers and Alexis Christoforous to discuss the latest on the coronavirus.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to bring in Dr. Kathleen Jordan now. She's senior vice president of medical affairs at Tia. Doctor, thanks so much for joining us. You know, you would think that doubling the number of vaccinated Americans would produce at least some decline in the spread of the virus. Why is it that we haven't been able to achieve that yet, do you think?

KATHLEEN JORDAN: Well, a few reasons. I think the variants certainly have upped the level of contagiousness. But I think it's really important to note that we're in a different situation than India. We have seen a rapid decline in the number of deaths. So we have vaccinated and started vaccinating our most vulnerable. So those persons aren't dying. So the number of hospitalizations has rapidly decreased. Number of deaths is down from 700 from its peak of 3,500 today. And we have ICU capacity again.

So vaccinations have worked. We're preventing death. What's happening on the flipside is, people have started to open up on their own or with directives. And we've seen the number of young people with cases rise. So that's been an increasing number of the cases. So now 20% of the COVID cases are in people under 30. India is in an entirely different situation. India has only fully vaccinated 1%, 1.3% of their population. They're at full ICU capacity. And vaccinations will certainly help with their capacity, as well as their death rate. So I certainly hope to see the world respond in aiding India.

KRISTIN MYERS: All right, so doctor, how should folks, then, that are watching this program, folks that are vaccinated, how should they start behaving then, especially if they're around folks that are vaccinated or perhaps are not vaccinated? As I heard you mentioned that folks are essentially taking it upon themselves to do their own reopening strategies, what should the strategy really be?

KATHLEEN JORDAN: I think we still need to be careful. And we need to not open until we have more of us vaccinated. So, small gatherings, outdoor gatherings, still masking when we're in close contact with the public. So, certainly, we've seen Israel be successful at this. They've opened up restaurants, they've opened up stores, but they've continued masking, and they've still not engaged in large scale public gatherings. They haven't brought in much travel or tourism.

And I think that that's a lesson we could learn from and really kind of still be careful until more of us are vaccinated. I do also think we have some work to do on the vaccine hesitant group. I'd like to see higher numbers of us vaccinated. And I'd also like to see our children vaccinated. Remember, children under 16 are 20% of our population. And that's the population that's driving the increase in cases. So we'll see increased safety as we expand more groups into being eligible for the vaccine.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I know at Tia, you focus on women's health, Dr. Jordan, and would like to know what you're seeing with regards to vaccine safety for pregnant women or those thinking about becoming pregnant across all the vaccines that are now available to folks, which that could also be part of why we're seeing hesitancy to get the shot from a certain population.

KATHLEEN JORDAN: Yeah what we see from our patients is a lot of questions. There's a lot of questions on what is safe in pregnancy. Vaccines have long been used in pregnancy because as you vaccinate the mother, those antibodies are passed to the newborn and actually is considered a good thing. And we actually time vaccines in pregnancies specifically for that reason. It's been nice to see that there's actually formal trials going on in pregnant women. And we now have results from several thousands of women that have delivered successfully. And we know that the vaccine has been safe in those women. So that's been reassuring.

KRISTIN MYERS: Doctor, I want to go back to that point about India and all of the cases that they have there. What does this mean for us globally when we still see so many countries, but India particularly struggling in terms of not just the vaccinations, but also just dealing with spikes and waves and surges inside the country? Does that mean for folks here at home that even though we're cheering about all the progress that we've made that, really, we can't cheer too loudly or celebrate too early until the rest of the world joins us on the same page?

KATHLEEN JORDAN: Wow, there's so many ethical and political implications to that question. But I do think that this whole pandemic has shed light on the fact that we live in a world. We don't live in a city. We have travelers. We have tourism. We have immigration. This is a pandemic. This is a worldwide phenomena. And collaboration and cooperation is what's going to get us out of it. We still-- we need to help each other with these pockets of outbreaks, these pockets where they're reaching ICU capacities. And it's been nice to see. I know we have, I think, the Sputnik vaccine going into India and other worldwide manufacturers contributing as well.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: How safe is it for those who are vaccinated to get back to some normal activity, like eating inside of a restaurant? Can people who are vaccinated go outside without wearing a mask? What are you hearing? And what is the CDC saying about that?

KATHLEEN JORDAN: We've long known that outside gatherings and outside activities are probably one of our safest and not driving a lot of transmission. So particularly as we're heading into summer, everything we can do outdoor versus indoor would be safer than doing it indoors. So when we're outdoors, I think, and not in close proximity or in close conversation with folks, it's probably safe to be without masks. When we're indoors with unvaccinated persons, we're still requesting masking and distancing and minimizing the number of people, actually. So large scale activities are going to drive large scale spread.

KRISTIN MYERS: How do we--

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So if people--

KRISTIN MYERS: Go ahead, Alexis.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

KRISTIN MYERS: No, no, all you, all you.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, now I was just wondering, if people remain hesitant on getting the vaccine, whether here or around the world, does that just mean that the pandemic lasts that much longer?

KATHLEEN JORDAN: That is actually the concern because that's the group that's, A, the most vulnerable, so going to actually be utilizing ICU capacities and hospitalizations. And they remain at risks, but they also-- even if they're young and not at serious risk for death, they're still driving transmission at a much greater rate than those that are vaccinated. So we look at-- there's about 20% of people that are fairly resistant still to getting the vaccine, in addition to the other 20% of the population that's under 16 and not eligible. So that's a big chunk of the population.

So what I'd hope for this group is that we continue to seek and share information and that each of us you can share information and share with those in our circles that actually need the conversation to progress. You know, we saw this with measles vaccinations even in the '80s and '90s. It took 10 years to convince the hesitant group to get vaccinated. Now we're in a different situation now where we have the internet and many more information sharing tools. So I would hope we could get there much faster. Plus, we have the public interest in COVID that we probably didn't have in the '80s and '90s. So I'm hoping it takes less than 10 years. I'm hoping it takes 10 days, but we can all hope.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: We're right with you on that hope. All right, Dr. Kathleen Jordan, senior vice president of medical affairs at Tia, thanks for being with us today.