The fact that you only need one dose with the J&J vaccine makes a huge difference: Northwell Health CEO

Michael Dowling, Northwell Health CEO joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss COVID-19 one year later.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, it has been nearly a year since COVID-19 forced cities across the country to go into lockdown. Northwell Health was at the epicenter of the pandemic early on with the epicenter here in New York. It's treated more patients than any other health care provider around the country, with more than 100,000 patients passing through its hospitals so far.

Let's bring in the CEO of Northwell Health. We've got Michael Dowling joining us today. And Michael, we'd love to get an update here on how things are going on vaccinations. But I want to just kind of get your reflection. We're talking about a year since the lockdowns.

I was thinking back to so many of these interviews that you gave early on when you were right at the epicenter of it. A year on, does it feel like things have moved much quicker in terms of the reopening? How are you thinking about this one-year anniversary?

MICHAEL DOWLING: Well, we're in a relatively good place today compared to where we've been in the past. We actually did see about 167,000 COVID patients in total. But when you're in the middle of a pandemic, one of the things you know is that the pandemic is going to last a long time. It's not like other disasters, where you have a storm or a hurricane or something, and it comes on a Friday, and it's gone on a Tuesday.

So we knew very well when we got into the beginning of the pandemic and it was declared a pandemic that we'd be with it for a long period of time. So I'm not surprised. But it's been an extraordinary experience. And I believe that it has changed everybody, has changed every organization, and I think has changed us all personally.

And I think we've handled it relatively well, given the fact that we knew very little about the virus. We didn't know what exactly the effect it was going to have on people. We didn't have any treatments that we knew at the beginning about how to take care of it.

But given all of that, the thousands and thousands of people that we actually saved is an extraordinary accomplishment. And obviously, a lot of people did not make it, they died. And that's unbelievably unfortunate. And we're sorry for that. But I think the success overall was pretty extraordinary, given the fact that we were the first to be hit with this in the United States in a major way.

ZACK GUZMAN: And Michael, you're also among the first health systems to distribute the J&J vaccine for Americans as well. I mean, relative to what you saw from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses in cold chain storage, what are you seeing different this time around in the early days of rolling that one out?

MICHAEL DOWLING: Well, we're still vaccinating people with Moderna and Pfizer. That is still the predominance of the vaccine that we have. And we are now equipped to vaccinate about 60,000 to 70,000 people a week.

The J&J vaccine that just came out-- and we did the first vaccination with J&J in Long Island last week. Once that supply opens up, which we expect, and the supply from the other vaccines open up, I think this will move relatively quickly. And the fact that you have a vaccine where you only need to do one dose makes a huge, huge difference.

The complexity of Moderna and Pfizer from an implementation operational point of view is pretty complicated, more complicated than what most people think. One-dose vaccine will allow us to do many, many more people more quickly. And I believe that over the next couple of months, we will be able to move through the population very, very quickly indeed. And that's a good sign. And that's a good outcome.

AKIKO FUJITA: The Biden administration has said that they expect to have enough vaccines by the end of May. Is that the kind of timeline you're looking at right now when you consider how quickly things will move along because of that one-dose vaccine now available?

MICHAEL DOWLING: Yeah, I think April, May, I think we will see a large, large supply of the vaccine. I think, though, that we've got to be a little bit calm here and a bit patient. I think that we're going to be working through the bulk of the summer vaccinating people.

I think we've got to lower expectations a little bit. It is going to end. But some people are thinking about the fact that it might end in June. I think that we're going to go into the early fall before we feel very comfortable on this because also remember that with all of the various variants out there, you could get surprises here.

Complacency is an enemy at the moment. We're in a good place, good progress. But we can't fall into the complacency trap and believing that it's already over. It won't be over until it's over. And I am looking towards the early fall as when I think we can declare victory. That's what I'm hoping.

ZACK GUZMAN: What do you make of the rollout so far, the speed that we've seen because a lot of people might have, earlier on, really leaned in on health institutions like yours? But now we're seeing mass vaccination sites take off, a lot of vaccines getting distributed that way. What do you make of the pace and where we're at now, as we have a third vaccine now approved?

MICHAEL DOWLING: Well, remember also that even a lot of the large vaccination sites, including sites that the counties open up, especially in our area-- we are the ones still doing it. We're doing a lot. And others are doing it as well. But we are doing the major, major portion of the community vaccination.

At the beginning, it was complicated. These are not easy things to set up, especially when the supply of the vaccine is unpredictable. You don't know what you're getting until the last minute. So it's very, very hard to plan. That's getting a little bit better now with the supply increasing.

And the J&J makes it a lot easier, of course, as I just mentioned. So I think that, given where we started just a couple of months ago from where we are today, I think we're in a much better place.

And the other issue is that there's been a lot of guidelines and regulations around this. A lot of it is very micromanaged. And I would argue at this point that it needs to be more loosened up so that the eligibility needs to be loosened up a little bit more, so now we can actually just go and vaccinate as many people as we possibly can. So you can overly bureaucratize this a little bit too and overregulate it. And I think now is the time to begin to loosen up, especially as the volume of the vaccine and the supply increases.

We are ready. We have the infrastructure. We have the people. I will have about 500 people committed to this over the next couple of months. And we're ready to go seven days a week as long as the supply comes.

AKIKO FUJITA: Michael, as busy as you have been over the last year, you actually released a book, "Leading Through the Pandemic," in the midst of all of this, which touched on your experience in tackling COVID-19 but also drew on some of your personal experiences and upbringing. What prompted you to write the book?

MICHAEL DOWLING: Well, I started writing the book way before COVID. And many people over the years had asked me, you should actually write down the history of your stories, an immigrant story. And it's also a story, in many ways, about what's possible. Everything is possible. You never let your circumstance limit what you could potentially do in the future.

So people were arguing with me and nudging me to do it. I was resistant at the beginning. But then I started. When I started putting it down on paper and putting it together, actually, it was rewarding for me personally as well. But everybody has a history. Each one of us has a unique history.

And I also thought, given all of the issues that were going on about immigration over the last couple of years and the difficulty with immigrants and how immigrants can cause this kind of damage and that kind of damage, which of course, I don't agree with at all, I thought, given the fact that I am an immigrant, like all of us-- everybody that's watching this is an immigrant in one way or another or the descendants of immigrants. I thought it would be helpful to put it down on paper.

And not that it is unique with regard to my experience being so different than a lot of other people's experiences. But I thought maybe it will inspire somebody. And it was helpful to my family, actually. When I sat with my brothers and my sister and suggested doing this, they were very happy with it. And I actually learned things about my family that I didn't even know until I started writing the book because I left home at a young age. And I've not been with my family since I've been around 16 years old. I left home at that age.

So to me, if it proves the point when people read it that everything is possible-- and that to me was the main message of the book. Whatever the circumstances, don't let your circumstance intimidate you about the future.

AKIKO FUJITA: It's certainly a timely release in many ways, to your point, hitting on a number of issues that have really been at the forefront over the last year. Michael Dowling, it's good to talk to you today, the CEO of Northwell Health joining us there.

And stay tuned to Yahoo Finance. Tomorrow, we've got epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm joining us to discuss how new COVID-19 variants may change the pandemic's trajectory. That conversation is at noon Eastern tomorrow, right here on "Yahoo Finance Live."