Washington Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, warned Sunday that the United States is “right where we were” when the country experienced its first peak of coronavirus infections earlier this year.
“We are right where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak,” Gottlieb said in “Face the Nation.” “The difference now is that we really had a propagation epicenter when New York was going through its hardships. Now we really have four main propagation epicenters: Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida and Arizona. And Florida seems to be in the worst shape, and Georgia is also warming up, and that’s worrying. “
Forty states have reported an increase in confirmed cases of coronavirus when they began to lift restrictions on residents and gradually reopened their economies. But amid the spikes, states like Texas and California have postponed their plans, instead of closing bars and limiting indoor dining at restaurants, while forcing residents to wear masks indoors.
Despite the jump in cases, President Trump has downplayed the latest increase, saying that many of the newly infected are young and have a lower risk of serious coronavirus disease. Trump also attributed the increase in cases to increased evidence and said Thursday after the latest jobs report showing that the unemployment rate fell to 11.1% and that the economy added 4.8 million jobs than the ” crisis is being handled. “
But Gottlieb warned that in the next two weeks, the death toll from the coronavirus, which currently stands at more than 129,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, will increase.
“The total number of deaths will start to increase again as the number of hospitalizations starts to increase again, so we will see deaths increase,” he said, adding that in the next two weeks, deaths could reach plus. 1,000 per day. “That doesn’t mean the case fatality rate, the actual death rate is not going down. But when you have more infections, even if the death rate is going down, you’re going to have more deaths, tragically.”
Gottlieb said the country must “accept the fact that we are in the second wave” of the pandemic and warned that “there is no clear line of sight on how we are going to get this under control.”
While some medications have been shown to be helpful in treating the coronavirus, such as remdesivir, which was found to help hospitalized patients recover more quickly, Gottlieb said the federal government and pharmaceutical companies should plan other medications available in the fall to ensure there is investment in manufacturing and a coordinated strategy to deploy them.
“We are facing a sharp drop,” said Gottlieb. “It is not clear that it will improve. We will have epidemics that will come and go throughout the country in different cities. They will ignite at different times. But we are not going to be able to really crush it.” this virus right now because there is so much infection around. It really doesn’t seem like we have the political will to do it. “
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