According to Dr. Scott Gottlieb — former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner for President Donald Trump — the number of coronavirus cases is likely to spike again as the United States approaches September and October.
CBS’ “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan noted the number of daily coronavirus infections has reached 41,000 with the death toll standing at around 900 deaths a day.
She asked Gottlieb how dangerous it is to be experiencing this level of the pandemic as the United States heads into the fall.
He explained it is “concerning” because infection rates should have decreased in July in August and they did not.
Gottlieb indicated the number of infections are decreasing now which is a “good sign.”
Watch his comments below:
As #COVID19 infections spike, how dangerous is the trend going into the fall? @ScottGottliebMD tells @margbrennan it’s “concerning,” adding that “August should have been a slow month,” and as the month ends, infection rates are now declining heading into September pic.twitter.com/cwpwRy4GdQ
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 30, 2020
He argued while the infection rates may be decreasing at the moment, he predicted they would begin to increase.
“As we head into September and October, kids return to school, people are starting to return to work, we’re likely to see infections start to go back up again and we know that hospitalizations lag infections and so we could see hospitalizations rise as well,” Gottlieb said.
He added, “The most concerning trend right now is that as we see the cases fall in the sunbelt, they’re picking up in other parts of the country particularly across the midwest and the west and particularly in rural parts of the country, and that’s a big concern because those parts of the country probably have less of the health care resources to keep up with the epidemic.”
More than 5,991,100 Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, and at least 182,700 have died as of Sunday afternoon.
On Aug. 29, the nation reported at least 871 new coronavirus related deaths and 44,639 new infections.
There have been an average of 41,924 cases per day over the past week, which is a decrease of 4% from the week prior.
