Former FDA Commissioner Says Coronavirus Mitigation Did Not Work ‘as Well as We Expected’
Large portions of the country are shut down to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, but the drastic measure of shutting down the country may not be working as well as healthcare professionals had hoped. Former Food…
Large portions of the country are shut down to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, but the drastic measure of shutting down the country may not be working as well as healthcare professionals had hoped.
Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb weighed in on their effectiveness during an interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” on Sunday.
“When you look across the country it’s really a mixed bag,” Gottlieb said, adding, “Certainly, cases are falling in the tri-state region around New York City.”
He continued, “But when you back out what’s happening in New York, and New York is really driving a lot of national statistics because it was such a large outbreak, around the nation hospitalizations and new cases continue to rise.”
He explained that there are roughly 20 states where the number of new coronavirus cases is continuing to rise. He said, “And so, while mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected.”
“We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point and we’re just not seeing that,” he added.
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In the same interview, Gottlieb indicated that the projected number of coronavirus deaths would be hard to predict beyond June at this point because there could be another large outbreak somewhere in the country.
“But I think when you look out to the end of June, it’s probably the case that we’re going to get above 100,000 deaths nationally,” Gottlieb said. “I think the concerning thing here is that we’re looking at the prospect that this may be a persistent spread.”
“We may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal. And 1,000 or more deaths becomes the new normal as well,” he added.
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His comments come as the number of new cases of the coronavirus in New York appears to be on a downward trend. However, in other states, the number of new cases appears to be on the rise.