How dropping mask mandates could impact the COVID pandemic

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• Geoff Bennett:

  After the federal court ruling this past week, striking down the federal mask mandates on planes and public transit, very few indoor masking requirements remain in the U.S. that says public health experts brace for the next COVID surge and his parents of kids under five anxiously await and approved vaccine for them.

  For more on this I spoke with Dr. Peter Hotez. He's a Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. And he's also Co-Director of the Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development.

  Dr. Hotez thanks for being with us. And given where we are in this pandemic, what's the effect of indoor masking becoming entirely optional in most places, and now on planes, buses and trains in most cases, given the federal ruling?

  Dr. Peter Hotez, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine: Clearly, we're not going to have to require masks in perpetuity. I don't think that was any, that was ever anybody's intention. My recommendation was to keep mask mandates in place, at least until we get over this BA.2 hump because this BA.2 subvariant is the most transmissible we've seen before even more transmissible than Omicron and getting up there with the level of measles. So this only really works well if both the recipient of the virus and the deliver the virus both are masked, and then it greatly reduces your risk. But to just have one side and now I think is not nearly as efficient.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And from a public health perspective, does the shift away from masking? Does that make it harder for local governments to reinstate mask mandates if there's another wave?

• Peter Hotez:

  That's exactly right. And this is what I worry about. I think, you know, we only have a limited toolbox in terms of our ability to control this virus. Vaccines and boasting being one of them but the others is wearing masks. And when we're at a low point in terms of virus transmission I think then we can get away wearing masks. But once virus transmission goes up, especially with these new highly transmissible variants, it's really important, everybody has a mask on. And it's really important that public health officials have at their disposal the ability to implement mask mandates for that period of time when transmission is going up. And I think it's really unfortunate what happened with a federal judge in Florida to undermine the CDC efforts.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So let's talk about variants. What happens with this pandemic, after the BA.2 wave? How do we navigate it?

• Peter Hotez:

  After this BA.2 wave, I think we're going to get a bit of a reprieve. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe for a few months. We don't really no, but here's what I'm worried about next, we've had a pretty serious wave of COVID-19, in the southern states and in Texas, in the summer of 2020, in the summer of 2021. So I have to believe that we're at risk from another variant, TBD, to be determined, coming from abroad, hitting the southern states in Texas, starting in July, again. We need to be able to have the ability to ask people to put masks on again, in addition to keeping up with their boosters.

  And then after that, you know, there are models out there that suggest we could be in for regular winter waves in January, February of COVID-19, just as we expect experiencing for years with the upper respiratory coronaviruses, even pre-pandemic. So the point is, this pandemic could last for a few years, being able to adjust our requirements to manage it during these periods when transmissions going up is going to be the key to saving lives.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Let's talk about vaccinations for the youngest children ages zero to five. Administration Health Officials, they once hoped to authorized, you know, first shots for young children at the beginning of this year. Now, they're saying June most likely, what's the latest and what accounts for the delay?

• Peter Hotez:

  I think the delay is the fact that the they went down to a much lower dose of vaccine for the for the under-fives. And by doing that they got less of a robust immune response in these really young kids. And now it looks as though they're going to need that third dose in order to give adequate levels of protective immunity. So most likely what they're doing is waiting to see that data from the third dose before they greenlight it.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And we've talked in the past, you've made the point that if we're to end this pandemic, we've got to make a COVID vaccine available to underserved nations across the globe really to prevent future variants from forming. And you and your colleagues have developed a low cost vaccine called Corbevax. Tell us about that and how it's helping to close the vaccination gap.

• Peter Hotez:

  Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, remember, Delta rose out of an unvaccinated population in India last year and Omicron and BA.2 arose out of an unvaccinated population out of southern Africa last year. So until we vaccinate the world's low and middle income countries, Mother Nature is going to continue to hurl significant variance of concern at us. And so with that in mind, we developed a vaccine that uses an older technology, recombinant protein fermentation and yeast that's already in place in many low and middle income countries. We use that same approach for a COVID-19 vaccine that looks really promising in terms of levels of protective antibody and T-cell responses. We licensed it with no patent to vaccine producers in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, now Botswana, so it's really great that we can make that kind of contribution to addressing vaccine inequalities.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Absolutely. Certainly encouraging. Dr. Hotez, great to see you as always, thanks for your time.

  And next week on the News Hour, my colleague John Yang reports on the vaccine for the world developed by Dr. Hotez and his team to fight COVID vaccine inequity.