Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that he expects surging U.S. coronavirus cases, linked to the highly transmissible delta variant, to start decreasing in just a few weeks.
“Probably, in two or three weeks, I think that we were probably about three weeks behind the U.K.,” said the former FDA chief in the Trump administration.
“The U.K. clearly is on a downslope…I would expect some of the southern states that really were the epicenter of this epidemic to start rolling over in the next two or three weeks.”
While the epidemic is still expanding across southern states, the rate of expansion is showing signs slowing. Gottlieb told “The News with Shepard Smith” that the slowdown is a sign that those southern states may be reaching their peak.
Gottlieb did warn, however, that northern states may start to see more delta spread, as rates decrease in the south.
“Here, in this country, it’s going to be much more regionalized now, I don’t expect the density of the spread of delta in states like New York or Michigan to be what it was in the south,” Gottlieb said. “We have more vaccine coverage, up there, we’ve had more prior infection, but you will see an uptick in cases, even in states where there is a lot of vaccine coverage, probably just not as severe.”
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion Inc. and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”
Source: Business - cnbc.com
