Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday that he believes Covid’s rise driven by the delta variant that ravaged South America has peaked.
“I thought there was an indication that the south was at its peak, and I think it’s pretty clear that right now the south has reached its peak,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said. “It doesn’t feel that way because we still have a lot of new infections day in and day out and hospitals still have very hard weeks ahead of them,” he acknowledged. “They will still shrink as infections begin to subside.”
Gottlieb’s comments on “Squawk Box” averaged seven days of new daily coronavirus infections nationwide in the U.S. at about 147,300, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. This is an increase of 13% over a week ago.
Many southern states, particularly in areas with lower Covid vaccination rates, such as parts of Louisiana and Arkansas, were one of the first places in the United States to see a sharp increase in highly delta-related coronavirus infections. transmissible. Signs that the current wave of infection is spreading south may provide information about the experiences of other regions of the United States that were affected by the delta variant a few weeks later.
“You see states like Arkansas and Louisiana, you see how cases are dwindling,” said Gottlieb, who is on the board of Covid vaccine maker Pfizer. The company’s vaccine received full FDA approval Monday morning.
According to CNBC’s analysis of Hopkins data, the seven-day average of new daily Covid infections in Arkansas has dropped 0.5% from a week ago, meaning it’s more or less constant. In Louisiana, new daily coronavirus cases have dropped 14% from last week, according to a seven-day average, according to CNBC analysis.
Other metrics report Gottlieb’s view of the south. The former FDA chief, who headed the drug regulator from 2017 to 2019 to the Trump administration, also noted the estimated transmission rates in the southern states that are calculated by the covidestim.org website.
Led by public health researchers at Harvard and Yale universities, the project provides real-time estimates of an epidemiological concept known as R0 or R naught. When the R value is 1, it means that the average person who is infected with coronavirus will transmit it to another person. When the value is less than 1 for a particular site, it indicates a decreasing transmission of a disease.
“The rate of expansion of this epidemic is below 1 in most of the south,” including Florida, Gottlieb said, “showing a shrinking epidemic.”
Florida set a number of new record highs for daily coronavirus infections during its delta-induced wave and state hospitals were reaching the limit. At one point, in early August, Florida accounted for approximately 20% of new cases of Covid reported in CNBC’s Hopkins data analysis in the United States, showing that the seven-day average of new infections coronavirus in Florida is more or less constant, 0.67% over a week. does.
“If you look at the data in Florida, the day-to-day cases are declining for every age category, except for children under the age of 18, because you now see outbreaks in the schools that drive the infection,” Gottlieb said. “If schools weren’t open in Florida … and you didn’t see this outbreak in children, Florida would come very clearly when it comes to day-to-day cases.”
In late July, Gottlieb told CNBC that he thought the United States in general would begin to see a plateau of its delta-driven wave in mid-August. This did not happen.
Most recently, on Aug. 13, he said, “You’ll see the course of the delta wave probably between late September and October.” Also during this interview, he added, “We hope we are on the other side or we get to the other side sometime in November and we will not see a big wave of infection after that on the other side of this wave. delta “.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and board member of Pfizer, of the start of Tempus genetic testing, of healthcare technology company Aetion Inc. and biotechnology. Illuminate. He is also co – chair of Norwegian Cruise Linei Royal Caribbean“Healthy Candle Panel”.