Washington – Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration during the Trump administration, predicted Sunday that declining COVID-19 infection rates are “likely to continue” because more north -Americans receive their vaccines and the number of people who have already contracted the coronavirus.
“This has been a tragic loss in the United States, but we should be optimistic, in my opinion,” Gottlieb said in an interview with “Face the Nation.” “I think we will continue to see infection rates decline in the spring and summer. At the moment they are falling dramatically. I think these trends are likely to continue.”
There have been more than 28 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. and the death toll is close to 500,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. But there has been a decline in new COVID-19 cases in recent weeks and hospitalizations continue to decline.
Gottlieb said the new variants of the virus first identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil do create new risks and could be more common in the US, but not enough to reverse the falls at this time.
“I think it’s too little, too late in most parts of the country,” he said. “With rising vaccination rates and also with the fact that we have infected about a third of the public, protective immunity is enough that we are likely to see these trends continue.”
Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers are developing booster and working to redesign their features to protect them from new strains.
The Biden administration has worked to speed up the pace of vaccinations and increased the supply of vaccines to states. More than 61.2 million doses of COVD-19 vaccines have been administered and nearly 75 million doses have been administered as of Saturday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gottlieb said it will not be possible for the United States to reach herd immunity without children being vaccinated and contrasted COVID-19 with measles and smallpox, which were eradicated basically after successful vaccination.
“COVID will continue to circulate at a low level,” he said. “We hope that we will continue to vaccinate the vulnerable population, so that we will protect them from hospitalizations or serious illnesses and die from it. But that will continue to spread.”
With the Trump and now Biden administrations pushing China to share more data on the origins of the coronavirus, Gottlieb said Beijing should have information on antibody testing on people who worked in a laboratory. Wuhan, China, where the first cases of coronavirus were found. were detected, as well as the original strains, to allow scientists to study the evolution of the coronavirus over time. The World Health Organization is investigating the origins, but the White House has expressed concerns about China’s possible intervention in these efforts.
“The most likely scenario here is that this came from nature, that this was bouncing between people and animals over a period of time and finally exploded,” he said. “I think the theory of laboratory leaks, the fact that this may have been an accident outside this laboratory will never be completely dispelled. And the WHO should not leave that so easily.”