Washington – Dr Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on Sunday that the US was facing a “gloomy month” as coronavirus infections continued to increase on the east and west coasts.
“We have a gloomy month ahead of us,” Gottlieb said in an interview with Face the Nation. “We have a very difficult month ahead of us. At the moment, things are being led by the coast.”
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is nearly 19 million, while the death toll from the pandemic exceeds 332,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. Infections are on the rise in California, Massachusetts, New York and Florida, while declining in the Midwest and Great Lakes region.
Public health officials, meanwhile, warn that the country must prepare to face the toughest days of the pandemic, even as two coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are administered to health workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
Gottlieb said there are indications that the number of new daily cases is starting to flatten, although he attributes this to the holidays, when there are under-reports. In addition, he said the country is unlikely to see the burden on hospitals eased and that deaths will decline until the end of January.
“I don’t think any part of the country has done really well with COVID,” Gottlieb said. “Every state has struggled with this and so I would not try to make comparisons between different states in terms of how they approached it. Each state had to approach it differently because they all had different challenges.”
As of Saturday, more than 9.5 million doses of vaccines developed by Pfizer have been distributed in partnership with German BioNTech and Moderna, and more than 1.9 million people have received their first of two doses of any vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease. . Control and Prevention (CDC).
Gottlieb said he believes the number of people getting their first blows is likely to be higher than currently reported, but said the pace is ‘slower’ than what was publicly promised. Federal officials aimed to produce enough doses of coronavirus vaccines by the end of 2020 to vaccinate 20 million Americans through Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to accelerate vaccine development and distribution.
“The idea that we’ll get up to 20 million vaccinations by the end of the year is probably unrealistic at this point,” Gottlieb said.
While health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities were the first to receive the vaccinations, a CDC advisory panel recommended that adults 75 years and older and essential workers be in the next group to take their shots.
Gottlieb said as more doses are manufactured and distributed, officials will ‘get better systems in place to distribute the vaccines more efficiently’, and they will be helped by companies like CVS and Walgreens.
But he warned that it is difficult to try to vaccinate populations that are more difficult to reach.
“It’s going to be significantly harder to get the vaccines out, so the fact that we’ve struggled to vaccinate health workers and patients in the nursing home shows that we need to invest more in these efforts,” he said.