US potentially faces ‘lifelong infection’ of Covid, says Gottlieb

Dr Scott Gottlieb stressed the importance of getting as many people vaccinated as possible and warned of a potentially disastrous spring and summer without protective immunity as new variants of Covid emerge across the world.

“If we can’t achieve more protective immunity in the population, we might be faced with a situation where we have, of sorts, a lifelong infection as spring and summer approaches as these variants take hold. here, “said the former chief of the FDA. in the Trump administration in a CNBC interview of “The News with Shepard Smith” Thursday night.

Ohio state researchers have discovered a new strain of Covid in the United States with mutations scientists have never seen before. They also revealed they have found another strain identical to the highly transmissible strain from the UK. The researchers say these mutations “are likely to make the virus more infectious.”

Gottlieb warned that the variants could turn what could have been a relatively calm spring and summer, into “a summer where we have more infection because these variants are now circulating and they spread more easily, even in the warmer months,” while we really shouldn’t have had much of the coronavirus spread. “

Longtime professor Dr. David Edwards at Harvard University echoed Gottlieb’s feelings about the timing and importance of an effective vaccine deployment.

“Time matters, of course, to face any organism,” said Edwards, the founder of FEND, a nasal hygiene mist developed for the coronavirus pandemic. “Our main goal this winter should always be to immunize as many people as possible with the highly effective vaccines we have today.”

The United States has distributed 30.6 million vaccines and put 11 million in the hands of the people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An ensemble forecast compiled by the CDC, however, predicted that 92,000 more Americans would die from Covid in the next three weeks.

The United States has suffered 8,400 heartbreaking deaths in the past two days and nearly 40,000 in less than two weeks of 2021, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data. The pandemic kills, on average, more than 3,300 Americans per day.

Gottlieb told host Shepard Smith he was “encouraged” by Johnson & Johnson’s single dose vaccine and “confident” in the company’s ability to expand manufacturing to help scale up Covid vaccine deployment across the United States.

“The first data looked encouraging,” Gottlieb said. “One of the things that we saw in the data was that the antibody response continued to develop, even after about two and a half months.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and serves on the boards of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, and biotech company Illumina. Pfizer has a manufacturing agreement with Gilead for remdesivir. Gottlieb is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings‘and Royal Caribbean“Healthy Sail Panel”.