Washington – Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on Sunday that the United States is facing a “dark month” as coronavirus infections continue to increase on the east and west coasts.
“We have a dark month ahead of us,” Gottlieb said in an interview with “Face the Nation”. “We have a very difficult month ahead of us. At the moment, the cases are being led by the coast.”
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is close to 19 million, while the death toll in the pandemic has exceeded 332,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. Infections are increasing in California, Massachusetts, New York and Florida, as they begin to decrease in the Midwest and the Great Lakes region.
Public health authorities, meanwhile, warn that the country must prepare itself to face the most difficult days of the pandemic, even with two coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna being administered to health professionals and residents of health care institutions. long stay.
Gottlieb said there are indications that the number of new daily cases is starting to stabilize, although he attributed it to holidays, when there is underreporting. In addition, he said the country is unlikely to see the burden on hospitals ease and deaths to stabilize by the end of January.
“I don’t think any part of the country has done particularly well with COVID,” said Gottlieb. “Each state struggled with it and therefore I would not try to make comparisons between different states in terms of how they approached it. Each state had to approach it differently because they all had different challenges.”
Until Saturday, more than 9.5 million doses of vaccines developed by Pfizer, in partnership with the German company BioNTech and Moderna, were distributed, and more than 1.9 million people received the first of the two doses of both vaccines, from according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Gottlieb said he believes the number of people who received their first shots is likely to be greater than what is currently reported, but said the pace is “slower” than publicly promised. Federal officials intended to produce sufficient doses of coronavirus vaccines to inoculate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 through Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to accelerate the development and distribution of vaccines.
“The idea of getting 20 million vaccinations by the end of the year is probably not realistic right now,” said Gottlieb.
While health professionals and residents of long-term care facilities were among the first to receive vaccines, a CDC advisory panel recommended that adults aged 75 and over and essential frontline workers be in the next group to get the vaccines.
Gottlieb said that as more doses are manufactured and distributed, authorities “will create better systems to distribute vaccines more efficiently” and will be assisted by companies like CVS and Walgreens.
But he cautioned that trying to vaccinate hard-to-reach populations will present its own challenges.
“It will become significantly more difficult to get these vaccines out, so the fact that we have been struggling to vaccinate healthcare professionals and nursing home patients shows that we need to invest more in these efforts,” he said.