We're still far away from COVID-19 vaccine coming to market: Doctor

Osmosis Chief Medical Officer & Former Center for Disease Control Epidemic Intelligence Officer Dr. Rishi Desai joins Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita to discuss the latest coronavirus developments as U.S. cases top 5.75 million, according to Johns Hopkins.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: The FDA commissioner is backing off some claims he made about the efficacy of convalescent plasma use in the treatment of the coronavirus. The FDA authorized its emergency use this weekend, saying the treatment reduced coronavirus deaths by 35%. But after a widespread criticism of the claim, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn taking to Twitter, saying that I have been criticized for remarks I made Sunday about the benefits of convalescent plasma. The criticism is entirely justified. What I should have said better is that the data shows a relative risk reduction, not an absolute risk reduction.

Let's bring in Dr. Rishi Desai. He is a chief medical officer at Osmosis and former epidemic intelligence officer at the CDC. Dr. Desai, let's start with that point that the FDA commissioner made there. Help us understand what this key difference is. He's saying I overstated the claim here. It wasn't about relative risk reduction-- it was about relative risk reduction, not an absolute risk reduction.

RISHI DESAI: Yeah, I know, those terms can be easily confused. So think of it this way-- let's imagine that you're looking at a group of individuals that meets a certain set of criteria. Maybe they're in the ICU. Maybe these are individuals that are very sick. Maybe these are individuals that are also on two or three other medications.

Now you've kind of narrowed down your patients, right? Among that group of patients, we're seeing some benefit from convalescent plasma. And what is convalescent plasma? It's antibodies, basically giving antibodies from one person to another. And that helps them fight the virus.

So you're seeing a benefit. That's very different than saying that it's helpful for everyone and that across the board, you're seeing a reduction of almost, essentially, a third of deaths, or that you're seeing a benefit of a third among disability. So really, what he's talking about is if you look at a very narrow group of inclusion criteria, then and only then do you see some benefit. But that doesn't mean that it's actually working that way across the board or for everyone in quite that same way.

AKIKO FUJITA: So put in that context, how significant was the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization?

RISHI DESAI: Well, the FDA has been using the EUA, or Emergency Use Authorization, for a number of things, right? So they've been using it for creating diagnostic tests and letting RT-PCR come around and making sure that we have these different types of antibody tests available quickly. So they're using this day in and day out now.

And so to use it for convalescent plasma is good. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And the truth is that we were actually using convalescent plasma before the FDA did this. It just kind of gives one more layer of credibility to doing that.

Hospitals across America have been trying to throw everything in the kitchen sink at COVID-19. And so whenever you're trying to figure out what's the real benefit, you have to realize that these patients are getting everything. They're getting remdesivir. They're getting dexamethasone. They're getting convalescent plasma.

It's hard to tease out exactly what the benefit is. But it's good that the FDA has done this to make it a little bit less worrisome to someone that-- is there data on this? There is some data. That helps.

AKIKO FUJITA: Doctor, the concern here at the center of this discussion that's happening around convalescent plasma seems to be that there are concerns the administration is overstating the benefits of a treatment or a vaccine to essentially benefit the president's hopes of winning re-election in November. And Stephen Hahn addressed that in that thread we talked about. He took to Twitter, saying we at the FDA do not permit politics to enter into our scientific decisions, saying that this particular decision was driven by FDA scientists. How real are those concerns for you, that politics is dictating what essentially is going to be any kind of development on the coronavirus front?

RISHI DESAI: It's a very real concern. I mean, the FDA is an agency that is overseen by the Executive Branch of government. The CDC is another agency that's ultimately overseen by the Executive Branch of government. So the Executive Branch of government has a lot of purview across all these agencies that are giving us this information.

And we know that already, there is a lot of concern around where the data is coming from. Does CDC get to give the data? Or is that data now in the hands of other parts of the Executive Branch?

So it's really clear that everything these days is politicized. And, of course, when the statements come out like this, then immediately, everyone's going to think, well, wait a second, this is a biased interpretation of the data. And it was a biased interpretation. And I'm really glad that they walked it back and were honest about that.

AKIKO FUJITA: Having said that, have we seen the needle move in a big way on the treatment front? We're still a ways away from a vaccine coming to market. We've certainly seen a number of these Phase III trials start. But when you look at where we stand from where we began, have we seen that needle move in a significant way? And if so, what treatment do you point to on that front?

RISHI DESAI: We have. And that's the really great news. So things have definitely gotten better. We feel more confident with how to treat COVID-19 than we did, let's say four or five months ago.

Is that expected? Yeah, I would say that's expected. If all of the world is focused-- focusing their research energy on this, we'd better be further along than we were four or five months ago. So we do have benefits.

The biggest thing I would point to dexamethasone. So that's a steroid treatment that is now clearly indicated for people with COVID-19. Either if they have a need for oxygen or if they're ventilated, they should be getting dexamethasone. It's a cheap drug. It's a very available drug. So these are other points that make it more easy to distribute and use.

Convalescent plasma, a little less so. It's not as available. It's not as cheap. Remdesivir, not nearly as available, not nearly as cheap.

So these are logistic concerns. But all three of those have had evidence that they work. And we're using them now. And we didn't know that a few months ago.

AKIKO FUJITA: And finally, Doctor, it's tough to say where we are in this timeline of fighting the virus, especially given so many unknowns. But I'm curious if you're more optimistic right now in terms of the ability for the doctors and the science to catch up to the virus, if we're talking about the next several months. We've heard so much concern about this twindemic that could be lurking with the flu season around the corner as well. How optimistic are you about the ability right now and [INAUDIBLE] to be able to fight this virus on many fronts?

RISHI DESAI: I'm very optimistic. And the reason that I'm optimistic is that you can look at real examples where this is working. And New Zealand is a good example where this is effectively working really well. The scientific community has done a really astounding job of sequencing the virus, figuring out what drugs to use, the ones I just mentioned, getting vaccine candidates out there.

The group that has been really dismal is the politicians. They haven't followed the advice of scientists in the US. That's not true of all politicians. If you look at globally, there are many politicians in other countries that are following the advice of scientists. And that's where my optimism comes from.

AKIKO FUJITA: Dr. Rishi Desai, always good to talk to you. Appreciate your time today.

RISHI DESAI: Sure thing.