The United States might be nearing the end of the pandemic phase of the coronavirus outbreak, Dr. Scott Gottlieb said over the weekend.
Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said during “Face the Nation” on CBS News over the weekend that the U.S. is “close” to the end of the pandemic.
- “I think that we’re close to the end of the pandemic phase of this virus, and we’re going to enter a more endemic phase and as things improve, cases may pick up,” Gottlieb said.
- COVID-19 numbers may start to trend upward soon, he said. But “that doesn’t mean that we’re entering into another wave of infection.”
Gottlieb said we’ve reached the endgame of the pandemic because children can now receive the COVID-19 vaccine and there’s an antibody treatment on the way to stop the virus.
Indeed, back in October, Gottlieb told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that there were two factors to stopping the pandemic phase of the virus outbreak — the vaccine being approved for children and the antiviral pill’s debut.
- “I think those two things are going to be the bookend on the pandemic phase of this virus and we’re going to be entering the more endemic phase, when this becomes an omnipresent risk but don’t represent the extreme risk that it represents right now,” Gottlieb told CNBC in October.
Gottlieb has long pointed to Thanksgiving as a potential endpoint for the coronavirus outbreak, suggesting that 90% of the United States will have some form of COVID-19 immunity by the holiday.