Welcome to Episode 18 of “COVID: What comes next,” an exclusive weekly Providence Journal/USA TODAY NETWORK podcast featuring Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and an internationally respected expert on pandemic response

COVID: What comes next - With Dr. Ashish Jha

PROVIDENCE – Pandemic expert Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, on Tuesday expressed optimism about where the U.S. stands at this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now gripped the country for nearly a year.

“We have been seeing cases drop in the last six weeks and we've been waiting for the death numbers to start coming down -- and the numbers got below 2,000 daily deaths average over the weekend and they are dropping faster than I expected,” Jha said during the weekly taping of the national “COVID: What Comes Next” podcast.

Jha cited two driving factors.

“One is hospitals are no longer slammed and when hospitals are not slammed, what that means is that they have more time and they can focus more on patient care,” the pandemic expert said. “The flip side is when hospitals get really overwhelmed, you see death numbers pop… Part of the declining number of deaths is that hospitals are just able to do a better job.”

The second factor, Jha asserted, is the continuing rollout of vaccines.

“We have done a reasonably good job of vaccinating the highest risk people, in nursing homes,” with healthcare workers, first responders and others, Jha said.

As a result, Jha said, “I see a lot of optimism for the next two months, three months and and definitely longer, too.”

Jha said he supports the FDA’s decision Monday to not require vaccine manufacturers to run time-consuming clinical trials for new products that will be effective against the many coronavirus variants that have emerged in the U.S. and world. That means developers will in essence be able to more quickly tweak existing vaccines, much as they do yearly with flu vaccines.

“We don't need to run large 50,000, 100,000-person trials,” Jha said. We’ve [already] run them, and the vaccines are safe. If you make minor changes in the structure of the mRNA to deal with a variant, you want to do some safety checks to make sure that hasn't introduced any complications, and then you should be able to administer them. I would certainly feel comfortable getting them.”

Jha gave overall good marks to pandemic management by President Joe Biden’s administration, which has been in control for five weeks.

The country has gone from “one million doses a day being distributed to a million and a half to where we’re going to be over 2 million doses a day all through March,” Jha said. “It's a huge uptick. So on vaccinations, I feel like they've done a very good job.”

So, too, Jha said regarding communicating to the public.

Still, “if I had a critique,” he said, “I think they've been too negative about the long term. I hear ‘life will go back to normal by Christmas’ – but life will be way better well before.”

Jha praised the administration’s mask efforts. But he was not as complimentary about testing, saying “I think they have let testing slide a little bit. They've done a little bit… but I have been disappointed that they're not pushing testing harder.”

Also Tuesday during recording of the podcast, available from The Providence Journal and the USA TODAY NETWORK, Jha answered audience questions about the advisability of taking a cruise this summer (“It's still pretty risky and I personally would avoid it”); the presence of polysorbate in vaccines (manufacturers are considering reformulations); and “the appropriate freedoms and restrictions” starting two weeks after a second dose (they vary).

For the dean’s full answers and more of what he said about variants, masks and other issues, please listen to the full podcast.

This weekly podcast is hosted by G. Wayne Miller, health reporter for The Providence Journal.