Washington – Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said Sunday that the United States is facing a “dark moon” as coronavirus infections continue to rise along the east and west coasts.
“We have a gloomy month ahead,” Gottlieb said in an interview with “Face the Nation.” “We have a very difficult month ahead. At the moment, the cases are driven by the coasts.”
The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is close to 19 million, while the number of deaths due to the pandemic has exceeded 332,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. Infections increase in California, Massachusetts, New York and Florida, while they begin to decline in the Midwest and Great Lakes region.
Meanwhile, public health officials warn that the country should prepare for the toughest days of the pandemic, even as two coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are given to health workers and caregivers. long term.
Gottlieb said there are indications that the number of new daily cases is beginning to apply, although he attributed this to the holidays when there is underreporting. In addition, he said the nation is unlikely to see the burden on hospitals begin to ease and deaths to be reduced by the end of January.
“I don’t think any part of the country has really done well with COVID,” Gottlieb said. “Each state has faced this and so I would not try to make comparisons between different states in how they have approached this. Each state has had to approach it differently because they have all had different challenges.”
By Saturday, more than 9.5 million doses of vaccines developed by Pfizer had been distributed in partnership with BioNTech in Germany and Moderna, and more than 1.9 million people received the first of two doses of any vaccine, according to Centers for Disease. Control and Prevention (CDC).
Gottlieb said he believes the number of people who received the first blows is probably higher than currently reported, but said the pace is “slower” than what has been publicly employed. Federal officials have sought to produce enough doses of coronavirus vaccines to inoculate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 through Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to accelerate vaccine development and distribution.
“The idea that we will reach 20 million vaccinations by the end of the year is probably unrealistic at the moment,” Gottlieb said.
While health workers and residents of long-term care facilities were among the first to receive vaccines, a CDC advisory group recommended that adults 75 years of age and older and essential front-line workers be the next group to get the vaccines.
Gottlieb said that as more doses are produced and distributed, officials will “develop better systems to distribute vaccines more efficiently” and will be helped by companies such as CVS and Walgreens.
But he warned that trying to vaccinate hard-to-reach populations will present its own challenges.
“It will become significantly more difficult to get these vaccines out, so the fact that we have tried to vaccinate health care workers and patients in nursing homes shows that we need to invest more in these efforts,” he said.