Story at a glance
- The U.S. has seen a huge drop in new coronavirus infections as much of the population has been vaccinated.
- Scott Gottlieb said, “we have done enough to give ourselves the opportunity to enjoy the summer and be at low-risk.”
- But said the risk will likely increase in the fall and winter.
While COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. have dropped to their lowest levels in nearly a year, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says the threat of the coronavirus is likely to be low this summer but could pick back up in the fall.
During an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb was asked if the U.S. is close to declaring “mission accomplished.”
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“I don’t think we should declare mission accomplished. I think that we should declare a near-term victory. I think we’ve done enough to give ourselves an opportunity to enjoy the summer and be at low risk this summer,” Gottlieb told the news outlet.
“I do think that this is going to be a risk as we get into the fall and probably more likely the winter,” Gottlieb said.
“We could see new variants,” he added.
As the virus can spread more easily in the colder months, Gottlieb advised that the U.S. needs to implement better surveillance and sequencing of strains to better identify potentially dangerous variants.
He said there’s more work to do when it comes to getting Americans vaccinated and said the U.S. could probably see 75 percent of its population vaccinated by the fall.
The current seven-day average of daily new cases is 21,627, a drop of more than 22 percent compared with the week prior, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In terms of vaccinations, nearly 50 percent of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of vaccine while 40 percent have been fully vaccinated.
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