On Sunday, May 3, former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb said that the COVID-19 mitigation approach taken by the states “didn’t work as well as we expected.” Gottlieb told Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan that he did not consider the mitigation strategy to be a failure but noted that case numbers continue to climb, even after accounting for hotspots such as New York City. “Around the nation, hospitalizations and new cases continue to rise. There are about 20 states where you see a rising number of new cases,” said Gottlieb. Though the time it takes for case prevalence to double in a population has improved significantly, Gottlieb described a fatality rate of at least 1,000 per day as a possible “new normal” throughout the summer months. Gottlieb further cautioned that conditions would potentially be ripe in the fall for an explosion of new cases, emphasizing the need to get help to especially vulnerable populations. “Disadvantaged communities and certain kind of institutional settings where people can’t naturally social distance are hotspots. They’re very vulnerable. And we need to be putting resources into those kinds of settings. And it’s not just the shop floors and warehouses and workers who are vulnerable to infection because of the way they work. That’s certainly part of the story. But it’s also people who come from communities where they have to take mass transit. They can’t naturally social distance. They don’t have access to good health care to begin with and can’t get access to testing. Those communities are very vulnerable, and the data now supports that. We’re seeing pockets of intense spread in these kinds of settings and these kinds of communities, and we should be pouring resources in to help those people.”
Source:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-scott-gottlieb-discusses-coronavirus-on-face-the-nation-may-3-2020/