The United States will see a significant reduction in new coronavirus infections in the coming weeks, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday.
“I think we’re starting to see a pandemic in the United States in terms of declining cases,” Gottlieb said in an interview with Squawk Box.
However, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration warned that even if the peak number of new infections decreases, “we will still have outbreaks in some parts of the country.”
“We will never virtually eliminate this virus,” said Gottlieb, who led the regulatory agency from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration, reiterating the concern he raised on Friday when he warned that hesitation in the U.S. vaccine makes it unlikely that the nation will eradicate Covid as it does with other diseases, such as polio and smallpox.
“But I think you’re going to start to see cases drop quite dramatically as we go into May,” said Gottlieb, who is on Pfizer’s board of directors, which is removing one of the three Covid vaccines for Emergency use in the US Modern makes the other vaccine with two shots. The Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine has been discontinued by the FDA due to rare but severe cases of blood clotting.
On Monday, the average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States was about 67,400, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. This figure fell slightly from a week ago, although it represents an increase compared to the levels observed at the end of March and equal to the increase last summer.
Deaths from the disease have fallen sharply in the US According to CNBC analysis of Hopkins data, the seven-day average of new Covid deaths on Monday was 723, down 25% from a week ago.
Gottlieb said he expects to see a continuous improvement in the pandemic landscape for two reasons. The first is warm weather, allowing more outdoor activities, where the risk of transmitting the coronavirus is lower. The second is further progress in implementing Covid vaccines, he said.
Every adult in the US became officially eligible for the coronavirus vaccine on Monday. Just over half of US adults have already received at least one dose of vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a board member of Pfizer, the Tempus genetic testing start-up, medical technology company Aetion Inc. and the biotechnology company Illumina. He is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘ and Royal Caribbean“The panel with healthy sails”. The Associated Press contributed to this report.