BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) "We're on a roll right now, with all hands on deck," said Dr. Tom Russo on WBEN Wednesday.
The Chief of Infectious Disease at UB's Jacobs School of Medicine said the logjam in vaccine supply is slowly loosening and he is encouraged by the announcement from President Biden that there will be more than enough vaccine to give every American adult a shot by the end of May.
But he stressed, "we're not done with this pandemic."
"If you're vaccinated, it affords a tremendous degree of protection for yourself.
But in terms of stopping transmission, it's about 75%-90%. Not quite zero.
So if you live in a household where you're vaccinated but others are not,
there is a possible risk until others are vaccinated," said Russo.
He said people need to understand the risks. "If your whole household and social bubble is vaccinated, then it's safe to interact without masks as long as someone is not returning to a household where they are going to interact with non-vaccinated people."
The governor of Texas announced Tuesday that the state is fully reopening next week and lifting the mask mandate. New York State does not appear to be anywhere near that point.
"It would be like blowing the lead in the 4th quarter" said Dr Russo. "Cases are down but they're not down to zero and we still have a low to moderate level of disease in the community."
Since there's still a significant segment that's not protected against the virus, Russo said we still need to follow public health measures to make sure we don't give this virus a chance to get back in the game.
"Until we hit that critical number of people that have protection, through vaccination or previously being infected, (and we want to get those people vaccinated at some point), we still need to be cautious in following public health measures. We're not done with this yet," he said.
Reacting to the lifting of restrictions in Texas, Russo thinks it's premature and gives people an incorrect message that we're done with this. "We're not," he said. "In another month or two we'll be there, but not yet."
Are we ever going to hit herd immunity? That's when 70% to 80% of the population is immune. "But it's a bit of a moving target," said Russo. "We still don't know how infectious this virus is . And depending on which variants become dominant, I think 80% is conservative. But that's the number we're going to need to get to."
Right now, Russo thinks we're about halfway to that target considering about a third of the country has been infected, and about 40 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
