Dr. Steven Corwin, NewYork Presbyterian Hospital CEO, joins Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous to discuss the latest coronavirus updates.
Video Transcript
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Even as more Americans are vaccinated and talking about post-pandemic life, new cases of COVID-19 are ticking up in different parts of the country, including in New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania, as variants of the virus spread and people eager to take advantage of this warmer weather begin to let down their guard. Joining me now is Dr. Steven Corwin. He is president and CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital. Doctor, good to see you again. So how much--
STEVEN CORWIN: You as well.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: --are these new variants playing a role in the number of new COVID cases that you're seeing?
STEVEN CORWIN: Yeah, we've seen a very slow decline in cases and we believe that's mainly due to the variant, the New York variant, South African variant, and the British variant. And that's a critical point of information, which is, we're still seeing a lot of cases. We still have a lot of cases in our ICU. And the decline has been slow.
So we're playing off how many people can we get vaccinated versus how much will the variants take hold? And so I still think we need to be careful. I think we are slowly opening up. My guess is by summer time, we'll be roaring again, but now is not the time to let down our guard.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, I mentioned New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the lead-in. Governor Murphy there in New Jersey was lifting restrictions, but he said he's going to pause those now because new cases of COVID-19 are rising in his state. But yet, you have Governor Wolf over in Pennsylvania going to roll ahead with lifting restrictions come Easter weekend. Do you think that it's a little too soon to be doing that?
STEVEN CORWIN: You know, I think that we've been balancing out how much opening can you do versus how many cases do you see. I think if you see a positivity rate like in New Jersey that's gone over 7%, you've got to be really careful. If you have a positivity rate in New York state that's less, you could be a little less careful. Certainly in the city, we're at around-- New York City, we're around that 5% range, 4 and 1/2% or so.
So you really have to be cautious. Let's not do so much too soon. Let's open it up a little, see when you open the spigot how much good is happening versus how many infections you have. I was not in South Florida this past week. But I think the Miami Beach experience looked to me like that was probably something we don't want to replicate.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, there are a couple of new Harris polls out with somewhat discouraging news, and I love your take on this. One of the Harris polls found that of people who have not been vaccinated yet, 40% of them say they don't want to get the vaccine. The majority of them, more than half, are Black people. What would you say to them? A lot of these people are saying that they are concerned about side effects, and they don't believe that this vaccine is really going to make a difference for them.
STEVEN CORWIN: Well, we've done a lot of work on vaccine hesitancy, particularly in communities of color. We have some videos on that. A lot of this is education, one-on-one education, trusted community organizations, trusted faith-based organizations, and really dispelling fears. You have a lot of misinformation, unfortunately, on the internet. Some of this has been politicized, but I think you can get there.
And certainly with communities of color, the question is, was this developed too soon? Are you experimenting on me? What are the long-term side effects? And that's pretty much true of everybody, really. We're seeing some resistance in white rural blue collar demographics. So it's one-on-one education. We have to vaccinate the vast majority of Americans to get to herd immunity. Otherwise, we're going to be circulating this virus, and more potent mutations will come out of this. So we really have to defeat vaccine hesitancy.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, this other poll that came out showed that of those who have gotten the vaccinations, meaning fully vaccinated, about 25% to 30% would wait until the nation reaches herd immunity in order to go to restaurants and dine indoors, in order to fly again. Are those folks being too cautious, or are they doing the right thing?
STEVEN CORWIN: You know, my view of it is, I would be more conservative rather than less conservative. Let this play itself out. We're getting close to three million vaccinations a day now. The J&J vaccine is being distributed. The production of all the vaccines will ramp up. So for myself personally, I would prefer not to go out and do indoor dining until the June or July time frame. And I would prefer not to fly commercial.
Now that's my individual choice. Many people have to fly. Many people have to work. Many people-- we want to see the restaurant industry recover. We want to see the airline industry recover. I would just urge people to be more rather than less cautious. If you don't need to do it, don't do it. If you don't really need to fly, don't fly. Don't take the vaccination for yourself individually as a passport to do exactly what you were doing pre-COVID. That's sort of where my head is at on this.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You think we can achieve herd immunity by the summer, though? Are you pretty hopeful about that?
STEVEN CORWIN: I think the trajectory I saw would be in the July, August timeframe if we continue to ramp up production and we eliminate some of the vaccine hesitancy. So, yes, and I think if we get down to a low level of infection that's suppressable, then I think that the herd immunity, the vaccinations will take effect.
And we'll be much better off as we get to the end of the summer, into the fall, and then, hopefully, we'll have a holiday season where people can get together this year and really feel a lot more comfortable than what we've been through, which has been horrific, as we all know.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, we're all hoping for that. Dr. Steven Corwin, president and CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital, thanks so much.
