Former FDA commissioner says it’s ‘too early to lift’ coronavirus restrictions

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday that restrictions put in place to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus shouldn’t be lifted yet and that the weeks to come will be difficult to get through. 

“It’s too early to lift these measures,” Gottlieb said on CBS’S “Face the Nation.” 

“It’s going to be a difficult April, we’re going to get through this. April’s going to be a hard month,” he added. “Come May we’ll be coming out of this and contemplate starting to lift some of these measures, as we see the epidemic curve come down.” 

“It’s going to be a difficult April” @ScottGottliebMD tells @margbrennan as #coronavirus cases surge in other parts of the country. Adds that “it’s too early to lift” stay-at-home measures pic.twitter.com/GsyneY4ogw

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 29, 2020

Gottlieb said “you can contemplate lifting some of these measures” after a 14-day sustained reduction in the number of daily cases. 

After the sustained two-week reduction, he said, “some of these very aggressive social distancing measures,” can possibly be lifted. 

“But you need to do it very gradually, you need to substitute in other things,” he said.

{mosads}Gottlieb added that officials must have the ability to conduct widespread testing and screening to determine where the virus is spreading before making any decisions on lifting restrictions.

“Remember this isn’t going to be a simultaneous reduction across the country,” he said.

The number of cases in New York, the state which now has the most cases of the virus across the country, will come down before the rest of the country, he said. 

“And it may appear the overall number of cases across the nation are coming down, because New York represents such a big part of that, but in fact New York could be coming down and other parts of the country could be going up,” Gottlieb added. “So we need to look at this on a regional basis.”