Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne on her outlook for the COVID-19 vaccination timeline

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss her outlook for the vaccination timeline.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: We're going to keep this discussion going on what else is coming our way with COVID-19 with Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne, adjunct assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Thank you for joining us, as I take a deep breath. Where do you think we stand in those of us under the age of 65 truly getting a vaccine before June?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: Well, I'm optimistic. But I do think that everyone needs to be prepared for there to be some delays. I think that in general, everyone was hopeful, initially, that we were going to be able to open up vaccinating to the general population by this summer. I still think it will be in the summer months. But June might be a little bit aggressive. And so that's why in the meantime, people need to still keep doing everything else that maintains their safety, such as social distancing, wearing masks, and doing things that prevent the spread without having access to the vaccine.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Clayborne, I want to ask you something I've heard brought up numerous times in my conversations about COVID over the last couple of weeks, and that of course, is comparing the efficacy rates of J&J's vaccine, a single-dose vaccine, compared to what we heard from Moderna and from Pfizer. Should we at all be worried about which vaccine we're getting? Should people be worried that they're not getting one vaccine instead of the other here at this point?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: I don't think so. I think what people should be worried about is if they can get a vaccine. Which one it is is actually not as important because all of them are showing protection against severe disease in particular.

So you have to remember, even though there might be slightly different rates of protection between the vaccines, all of them did a good job of protecting you from severe disease. And that's ultimately what we are interested in, that you are not going to get COVID and die from the illness.

There certainly is a chance that there might be some variations in how protected you are. Maybe you still get COVID, but you don't have as severe a course. And that's not optimal. Sure, everyone would like to just not get COVID altogether. But right now, as we continue to battle this in the trenches, the most important thing is to protect ourselves from dying from this virus.

And so I would actually just access whatever vaccine becomes available to you first. All of them have good data. All of them are showing good protection.

ADAM SHAPIRO: So when we talk about the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, once they're pulled out of their refrigeration units, if people don't show up for their appointment, at the end of the day, if there's excess vaccine, can it go back into the unit, or must it be used? Because there are these stories about wait in line at the end of the day to get the excess vaccine from those who didn't show up. Is that accurate?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: It depends on how the vaccine is being handled. There are time limits in what temperature the vaccine can sit at. There are opportunities for them to safely store it past a day that it's been taken out to be delivered. But there are maybe occasions where they've exceeded a time limit, and a vaccine needs to be administered that's been thawed. And that's why a lot of vaccination distribution sites are having waiting lists so that we do not waste any vaccines that are available.

And there's a lot of complexity, where we've had recent weather issues that have delayed people's ability to get to vaccination points or vaccines to be delivered. And so people are going to have to continue to be patient with the complexity that is involved in distributing these vaccines and dealing with some of the challenges, including keeping them at the appropriate temperature.

SEANA SMITH: Doctor, we've seen a massive drop in the number of new cases here in the US. The seven day average, I believe, off just around 60% from where we were just a month ago. Do you think we've turned a corner?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: I'm hopeful. Anecdotally on the ground, I have noticed when I go into work in the ER, that we're not seeing as many severely sick patients with respiratory failure who are needing breathing tubes and ICU admissions. And so I'm starting to think that we've turned the corner. That said, there's a lot of concern about the variants that are circulating and the risk for one of those variants to become a predominant strain and potentially have some resistance to the vaccines.

We don't have data of that yet. We're still hopeful that all the vaccines will potentially be protective against these strains. But that is why they're testing these booster shots that you guys just talked about. And that is why there is still a race to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible because it will limit the outbreak of a strain that is potentially resistant to the vaccines that we currently have.

ADAM SHAPIRO: So given what you just said, we know we have variants in New York. We know we have variants in Los Angeles, the large population centers. Would it make more sense for the government to rush larger quantities of vaccine to the large population metro areas to stop what you just predicted?

ELIZABETH CLAYBORNE: I don't think the answer to that question can be quite that simple, right? Because in addition to giving those large metropolitan areas the resources they need, they also need to be able to distribute them appropriately. And so there can be outbreaks that take place in less dense populations. And predominant strains can set fire in communities that are not as large as our large centers like New York and San Francisco.

That said, I am someone as a physician who always looks at data. So we want to make sure that we're vaccinating are most at-risk populations first and the areas that are most likely to have variants that could gain some predominance quickly and put the rest of the population at risk. So certainly, places that have large populations have more people and need more vaccines. That's very true. But that does not mean that we need to ignore other regions of the country where there are lots of populations that have some disadvantages and need to be paid attention to as well.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne is the adjunct assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Thank you for joining us.