Dr. Scott Gottlieb stressed the importance of vaccinating as many people as possible, warning of a potentially dire spring and summer without protective immunity, as new Covid variants appear around the world.
“If we can’t get more protective immunity to the population, we could face a situation where we have some sort of ongoing infection that is heading into the spring and summer as these variants are gaining a foothold here,” said the former FDA chief. in the Trump administration in an interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” Thursday night.
Ohio State researchers found a new Covid strain in the US with mutations that scientists have not seen before. They also revealed that they had found another strain identical to the highly transmissible UK strain. The researchers say these mutations “probably make the virus more contagious.”
Gottlieb warned that the variants could transform from what could have been a relatively quiet spring and summer, to “ a summer where we have more infection because these variants now circulate and spread more easily even in the warm months, when we actually don’t. should do ‘I’ve had a lot of spread of the coronavirus. “
Dr. David Edwards, a long-time professor at Harvard University, echoed Gottlieb’s sentiments about timing and the importance of effective vaccine deployment.
“Time is of course important when you are confronted with an organism,” said Edwards, the founder of FEND, a nasal hygiene mist developed for the coronavirus pandemic. “Our primary goal this winter should still be to vaccinate as many people as possible with the highly effective vaccines we have today.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US has distributed 30.6 million vaccines and put 11 million of them in people’s arms. However, an ensemble forecast prepared by the CDC predicted that an additional 92,000 Americans will die from Covid in the next three weeks.
According to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data, the United States has seen a heartbreaking 8,400 deaths in the past two days and nearly 40,000 in less than two weeks from 2021. The pandemic is killing more than 3,300 Americans a day on average.
Gottlieb told host Shepard Smith that he has been “encouraged” by the Johnson & Johnson one-time vaccine and “confident” in the company’s ability to scale up production to support the rollout of the Covid vaccine in the US.
“The initial data looked encouraging,” said Gottlieb. “One of the things we saw in the data was that the antibody response continued to build up even after about two and a half months.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and serves on the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus and biotech company Illumina. Pfizer has a manufacturing agreement with Gilead for remdesivir. Gottlieb is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘ And Royal Caribbean‘s “Healthy Sail Panel.”