The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs to adapt its Covid recommendations faster as new science emerges, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday, adding that the agency should do the same with more transparency.
“These guidelines have a greater impact on the economy than regulation,” but by far less public scrutiny, Gottlieb said on ‘Squawk Box’.
The former commissioner of the food and drug administration came after the CDC on Friday changed its guidelines on social distance at schools, not society at large. The public health agency said that with universal masking, most students could sit 3 feet apart, instead of the previous 6-foot protocol. The CDC also continued to recommend at least 6 feet of distance between adults in schools and between adults and students.
In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Gottlieb urged the CDC to learn more about the science behind its guidelines, writing that the “exact basis for his initial view of staying 6 feet apart “remains unclear. In the Journal and on CNBC, he said the initial recommendations and precautions early last year were based on the new coronavirus spreading like seasonal flu.
“It was reasonable to do so because we did not know much about the coronavirus. Therefore, we assumed it would act like flu. It did not behave like flu,” Gottlieb said on ‘Squawk Box’. to ‘overestimate and underestimate this virus’ in an important way’.
“It’s not so much an important question as, ‘Were we wrong about that?’ We were wrong in some ways, “Gottlieb, who led the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019, added.” But, ‘Did we learn fast enough and did we adapt our recommendations and guidelines fast enough?’ The answer is no. ‘
In a statement to CNBC, a CDC spokesman said that during “the first year of the pandemic, there were concerns about some CDC clues.” However, the spokesman said that the new director of the agency under President Joe Biden, dr. Rochelle Walensky, “promised to restore scientific credibility and public confidence in the agency”. the latest science.
We underestimated the role of air quality and high quality masks because we underestimated that it spread through aerosol transfer.
Dr Scott Gottlieb
Former FDA Commissioner
Gottlieb told CNBC that health officials “overestimated the usefulness of physical distance because flu spreads primarily through droplet transmission, and we know that droplets do not spread more than about six feet.” On the other hand, he added: “We underestimated the role of air quality and high quality masks because we did not appreciate it spreading through the spread of aerosol.”
Initially, there was skepticism from doctors about whether Americans would recommend wearing a face mask – especially something homemade like a scarf or bandana – would be effective. In early April last year, however, the CDC began recommending that people wear it in public, especially in institutions such as grocery stores where it is more difficult to keep social distance.
There is little debate in the public health community about the importance of wearing face masks, and some experts like dr. White House Chief Medical Officer Anthony Fauci has even begun advising that wearing two masks is likely to be more effective.
In October, the CDC acknowledged that the spread of the coronavirus could be caused by airborne particles, which could ‘take minutes to hours in the air’ and infect people more than six meters apart.
On the CDC’s website, ‘How COVID-19 Spreads’, the public health agency says it is ‘mostly’ done through close contact between people within 6 feet.
“There is evidence that people with COVID-19 under certain circumstances infected other people who were more than 6 feet away,” the CDC adds. “These transmissions occurred in confined spaces with inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person breathed heavily, for example while singing or rehearsing.”
Areas where Covid risks were initially overestimated also included contaminated surfaces, Gottlieb told CNBC. The CDC in May 2020 – about two months after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic – updated its website to stress that the virus is not easily spread by a person who touches an infected surface, according to NBC News.
Gottlieb acknowledged that in the early stages of a health crisis such as the Covid pandemic, there may be a lack of quality information to use as a basis for guidance.
“When CDC issues recommendations, there are different levels of evidence behind the recommendations and different levels of certainty,” he said. “If the agency is uncertain or predicts a recommendation on less-certain science, they should be transparent so we can take it seriously, but they usually do not.”
The CDC spokesman told CNBC that following the agency’s recent review, ‘key learners’ have already been implemented, including ‘reviewing key clues for potential updates at least every three months’, as well as ‘improving clarity and usability’.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, setting up Tempus genetic testing, the healthcare company Aetion and the biotechnology company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘En Royal Caribbean‘s “Healthy sail panel.