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Former FDA chief Dr Scott Gottlieb warned that the coronavirus pandemic was “about to explode” across the United States as the country confirmed more than 10 million cases of the coronavirus on Monday, a grim milestone just 10 days after hitting the 9 million mark amid a record rise in daily infections.
The country added about 105,000 cases on Sunday, and Johns Hopkins reported that this was the fifth day in a row that Covid cases exceeded 100,000.
“The challenge is that this virus is being distributed all over the country right now,” Gottlieb said. “We’re going to have a really big epidemic wave across the country and unfortunately it’s going to cause a lot of death and disease before we can have this therapeutic counterattack, not only with the vaccine, but also with these therapeutic antibodies. “
Amid the record spike in cases, two groundbreaking developments in the vaccine race were announced. The Food and Drug Administration has cleared the emergency use of Eli Lilly’s experimental antibody treatment for Covid-19, and drugmaker Pfizer has announced the first data showing its investigational vaccine is over 90 years effective. % to prevent coronavirus. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC there could be 50 million doses by the end of the year.
“It’s a great day for science, it’s a great day for humanity,” Bourla said. “When you realize your vaccine is 90% effective, it’s overwhelming.”
In an interview on “The News with Shepard Smith” Monday night, Gottlieb explained that determining who gets the vaccine first will be for whom the benefit-risk ratio makes the most sense.
“You want to target more people who will benefit from the vaccine, and those will be older people, probably people living in nursing homes or long-term assisted living facilities,” Gottlieb said. “They are not only at high risk of contracting the virus, but also at high risk of poor outcomes.”
In a recent NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll, only 20% of people said they would take a vaccine as soon as they could, but Dr Gottlieb told host Shepard Smith he didn’t think that this feeling would last. He explained that there will be a lot more data once the vaccine is ready for the entire population, which will not be until the second or third quarter of next year.
“The vaccine that achieves that level of effectiveness, when we’re talking about 90% or more effectiveness of a vaccine, that’s really going to give you a level of protection that can get you to a point where we can consider coming back. . to a semblance of normal life maybe later next year, once we are able to roll this out to a larger population, ”Gottlieb said.
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