Dr. Dona Kim Murphey, Doctors In Politics Co-Founder, joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down how President Biden plans to contain furthering the spread of COVID-19.

Video Transcript

- For more on the push in the Bush administration to roll out vaccines, I want to bring in our next guest here. Dr. Dona Kim Murphey is the co-founder of Doctors In Politics. A lot going on here, Dr. Kim Murphey. When we look at it, I'd be curious to get your take because it does seem like things are moving in the right direction in terms of the share of vaccines now distributed, been dosed to Americans. So where do you put us right now as President Biden takes office?

DONA KIM MURPHEY: I'm super encouraged. Very hopeful with the plans that he has, and the people that he has put into place to execute on those plans. Within the first 100 days, he has promised us that he will vaccinate 100 million Americans, which is about a third of our population. It's ambitious. I think it is possible.

It will require him following through on a lot of what he has proposed, in that he has the ability as the president to invoke the Defense Production Act, so he can make sure that the manufacture and the distribution of these vaccines is done efficiently. He has proposed to work with states to ensure that he has made the vaccines accessible by collaborating with them on identifying places, community centers, schools, gymnasiums, stadiums where the vaccine can be distributed efficiently. He has the leadership in place, I think, really, to think about how to roll this out quickly.

And I think it's, to me personally, I am very heartened to see that he is thinking very hard about ensuring that populations that are under-served, that are otherwise vulnerable, that they will also have access. He's working with folks on making sure that our eligibility requirements are maybe more standardized across the country. And that we're offering the vaccine not just to a very narrow population of people, but expanding that to include, for instance, for front-line workers, not just health workers, but those people who are staffing our grocery stores and other very necessary facilities. So yeah, I mean, I can probably wax on about this. But I am very hopeful at this moment.

- Well, doctor, the question then now at this point is, what needs to be done in order to get some of those people, particularly people of color-- we've seen the surveys that show that they are still hesitant to get a vaccine. What do we need to do to convince them that it is safe and it's the right thing to do? Because that of course is going to be one of the keys here in beating the virus.

DONA KIM MURPHEY: Yeah. I mean, so what I really think is-- what's the word for it? I guess it's inspiring-- about Biden's approach to leadership is that he really empowers people who have particular expertise in things like medical communications. He has I think among his COVID-19 response force Celine Gounder, who is a medical journalist. He has people in all different areas I think helping to inform him on how we can do this. He has also Professor Marcella Nunez-Smith who's at Yale and works on health equity. So I think that that's part of it. Right?

The other part of it I think is understanding that this is going to be a collective responsibility. And I think this is already happening in our communities, where there are organizations and individuals who are leading the effort to ensure that the messaging is appropriate for all of the different communities that have, in many cases, very valid historic concerns about vaccines, and about medicine in general-- that has historically exploited certain populations of people in this country. So I think that together with Biden's leadership, but also very importantly, the leadership within our own communities, we will be able to pull this off.

- And as we've been discussing, no doubt hundreds of millions of dollars going towards this effort to ensure people are willing and able to get that vaccine.