Coronavirus developments in Europe are likely to be no longer an initial indication of what will happen weeks later in the United States, due in part to U.S. advances in vaccinating its population, Dr. Scott Gottlieb on CNBC.
The former Food and Drug Administration’s comments on “Squawk Box” came a day after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, said the situation in Europe shows why U.S. states should not completely abandon pandemic precautions right now.
Italy imposes more severe restrictions on business in certain parts of the country following an increase in new infections, including an upcoming national blockade for the Easter weekend. German health officials have also warned of an increase in Covid cases.
“I said before that we were kind of four or maybe six weeks behind Europe, and we almost were,” Gottlieb said, referring to earlier phases of the global health crisis. “Everything that happened in Europe finally happened here. Now I think the situation has turned around. We are ahead of Europe.”
“I don’t think the conditions in Europe and the situation in Europe are necessarily predictive of what will happen here, as we have a lot more immunity in our population, both from previous infection (which they also have) and from vaccination,” he said. added Gottlieb, a board member of Pfizer, which makes a vaccine against Covid.
According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, approximately 9.5% of the population of member states in the EU and the European Economic Area has received at least one Covid shot. Approximately 7.5% of the Italian population and 8.5% of Germans have had at least one dose of Covid vaccine, according to ECDC data.
In contrast, 21% of the U.S. population has been given at least one Covid shot, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna require two doses for total protection against immunity. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only a single shot, has recently been phased out for use by the European Union. U.S. regulators granted emergency use authorization to the J&J vaccine late last month after removing Pfizer and Moderna in December.
“I think we should be concerned that things may turn in a direction we’re not predicting,” acknowledged Gottlieb, who has previously urged states to continue to require people to wear face masks to prevent coronavirus transmission. In fact, he has said that ending mask warrants should be the last public health measure to be eliminated.
However, the former FDA chief in the Trump administration said that emerging Covid strains, such as variant B117 first discovered in the UK, have been shown to be less problematic in the US than in other parts of the United States. world.
“Right now you see that the B117 is pretty common in all of the United States. It’s more than 50% of the cases in Texas, Florida and Southern California, and you don’t see the big rise in cases that we could have expected once this variant went claim retention in the United States, ”Gottlieb said, attributing it to the level of previous infection in the country along with vaccination rates.
Last week he estimated on CNBC that about 50% of Americans have “some form of immunity” to the coronavirus.
“The fact that we haven’t seen coronavirus growth increase … even though B117 is becoming the prevalent strain in the United States, I think it bodes well,” Gottlieb said Monday.
New York, where researchers discovered a new strain called B.1.526, is an area of concern for Gottlieb. He said there are indications that certain mutations in the virus in this strain “could make it more resistant to our vaccines and make people more likely to become infected again.”
“We don’t really understand this mutation well, but that’s a cause for concern, so we need to watch it very carefully,” he said, adding that more answers should be given to officials in the coming weeks.
Outreach: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and board member of Pfizer, initial genetic testing company Tempus, health technology company Aetion and biotechnology company Illuminate. He is also co – chair of Norway Cruise Line Holdings‘i Royal Caribbean“Healthy Candle Panel”.