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U.S. cases of COVID-19 have been declining for months, although they have flattened slightly over the past few days.
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The former FDA chief, dr. Scott Gottlieb, told CBS that with millions inoculated another boom is unlikely.
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However, he warned not to reopen too quickly, especially with more transferable variants.
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As more Americans develop immunity to the coronavirus, the country is unlikely to experience a resurgence in cases, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said in an interview aired Sunday.
Dr Scott Gottlieb told CBS’s Face the Nation that as the vaccination rate rises, along with the millions of Americans who may have natural immunity after being infected, it is unlikely that the US will endure another significant increase in cases.
“We’re talking about some form of protective immunity in about 55% of the population,” Gottlieb said. “There’s enough backstop here that I don’t think you’re going to see a fourth boom.”
Gottlieb added, however, that US numbers are likely to hold for a while before starting to trend again, citing two reasons: the more contagious coronavirus strain first discovered in the UK, which is now more common, as well as’ because we’re pulling back too fast to take off our masks and lift the mitigation. ‘
More than 81.4 million Americans, or a quarter of the country, received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, with more than 44.1 million fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
“If you look at Europe, where they have a true fourth wave, they only vaccinated one in nine adults. Here in the US, we vaccinated one in three. In the UK, they are seeing consistent declines, they have one in two. “The vaccination is going to be a setback, and we continue to vaccinate about three million people a day,” Gottlieb said.
Nearly 30 million Americans have been infected with the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Gottlieb said if a variant that can pierce through immunity spreads, it could change the American path.
Other experts such as dr. Anthony Fauci has also previously warned against drastically lifting the coronavirus restrictions, saying as cases fall, the plateau is not low enough.
“I do not know why they do it, but from a public health point of view it is definitely unpleasant,” Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, told CNN earlier this month after some states lifted mask mandates.
“Just pulling back at all the public health guidelines we know works – and if you look at the curve, we know it works – it’s just inexplicable why you want to back down now.”
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