Vaccine safe, more approvals a ‘game-changer,’ doctor says
Dr. Ashish Jha feels “like a Grinch” saying it, but the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health really wants you not to gather with loved ones for the winter holidays.
“Just like Thanksgiving I am again forgoing the opportunity to spend the holidays with my elderly parents, my brother and my extended family,” Jha said Wednesday. “We’re doing this because things are really bad right now.”
Jha’s plea, issued during a livestream with U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, comes as more and more health care workers in Massachusetts and beyond receive their first shots of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. Jha said the potential for three more vaccines to get approved in the near future could be a “game-changer” in expanding access more quickly.
And that’s why Jha said people have to buckle down now.
“Anybody we protect now is around to get a vaccine in four weeks or eight weeks or 12 weeks,” Jha said. “We’re right at the finish line. And what I ask of all of you is to hang tough, wear your mask and avoid gatherings.”
Jha touted the efficacy of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine as he worked to dispel concerns about its safety.
“Every single safety check has been there, we’ve done them, it’s been done well,” Jha said. “We’ve gone fast because it’s an emergency and we want to go fast.”
While some have raised questions about the mRNA technology used in Pfizer and Cambridge-based Moderna’s vaccines — like whether it can “somehow reprogram your genetic code” — Jha said the vaccines simply “gets your body to make a protein that elicits an immune response” and won’t affect a person’s DNA.
“I feel personally very confident about these vaccines,” Jha said. “I plan to get vaccinated as soon as it’s my turn, I plan to get my elderly parents vaccinated and I encourage all of you when it’s your turn to get vaccinated.”
Jha said he expects Moderna’s vaccine, which the FDA confirmed the efficacy of this week, will soon follow Pfizer’s in being granted emergency use authorization.
And he believes vaccines by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson could be before the FDA for review “in the second half of January” — a potential “game-changer” that could see the general public getting access to the shots as early as the end of March. Massachusetts’ current distribution timeline puts wide-scale availability at April or beyond.
Jha and Trahan also advocated for more federal funding to help states and local governments with the “huge logistical challenge” of rolling out the vaccines, as well as ramping up education campaigns and supporting their economies.
“This is not the stuff to skimp on,” Jha said. “We’ve got to spend the money … because that’s how we save lives and that’s how we get our economy back.”