Dr. Scott Gottlieb emphasized the importance of vaccinating as many people as possible and warned of a potentially terrible spring and summer, without protective immunity, as new variants of Covid appear around the world.
“If we are unable to obtain more protective immunity for the population, we could face a situation in which we will have, more or less, a perpetual infection arriving in the spring and summer, as these variants install themselves here,” said the former head of the FDA in the Trump administration in an interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” on Thursday night.
Researchers in the state of Ohio discovered a new strain of Covid in the United States with mutations that scientists had not seen before. They also revealed that they found another strain identical to the highly transmissible strain in the UK. The researchers say these mutations “can make the virus more infectious”.
Gottlieb warned that variants could turn what could have been a relatively calm spring and summer into “a summer where we have more infections because these variants are now circulating and spreading more easily, even in the hot months, when we really shouldn’t be. . t had a great spread of coronavirus. “
Longtime Harvard University professor Dr. David Edwards echoed Gottlieb’s feelings about the right time and the importance of an effective vaccine launch.
“Time is important, of course, when confronting any organism,” said Edwards, the founder of FEND, a nasal hygiene haze developed for the coronavirus pandemic. “Our main objective this winter should still be to vaccinate as many people as possible with the very effective vaccines we have today.”
The US distributed 30.6 million vaccines and placed 11 million of them in people’s arms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A set forecast compiled by the CDC, however, projected that an additional 92,000 Americans will die from Covid in the next three weeks.
The United States has suffered a distressing 8,400 deaths in the past two days and almost 40,000 in less than two weeks in 2021, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data. The pandemic is, on average, killing more than 3,300 Americans a day.
Gottlieb told presenter Shepard Smith that he is “encouraged” by the Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine and “confident” in the company’s ability to scale its manufacturing to help drive the launch of the Covid vaccine in the U.S.
“The first data looked encouraging,” said Gottlieb. “One of the things we saw in the data was that the antibody response continued to increase, even after about two and a half months.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and a member of the boards of Pfizer, the Tempus genetic testing start-up and the biotechnology company Illumina. Pfizer has a manufacturing agreement with Gilead to remive. Gottlieb also serves as co-president of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘ AND Royal Caribbean“Healthy Candle Panel”.