Former FDA Chief Gottlieb Expects School Masking to Stop in Low COVID-19 Areas

Former Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that schools could drop their masking requirements across the nation next week in areas of low COVID-19 prevalence.

"I think you're going to see governors start to do that," Gottlieb told CBS.

"A lot of kids haven't known a normal school day for two years. We need to try to lean forward aggressively to try to restore that and reclaim it when we can."

Gottlieb went on to tell CBS that in areas of high vaccination and low COVID-19, "we can safely contemplate" the lifting of masking.

But "that doesn't mean this isn't going to continue to spread," the former FDA chief added. "But when prevalence is low, you have a lot of people who've been infected, who have some level of immunity for a period of time, and you have high vaccination rates, we can start to lean forward and take a little bit more risk and try to, at least, make sure that students in schools have some semblance of normalcy for this spring term."

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