The former head of the Food and Drug Administration told NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday that the U.S. “may not be able to get transmission down much more,” when it comes to the coronavirus.
“I think that we need to understand this may be the new normal," former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told Savannah Guthrie in an interview. "We may not be able to get transmission down much more. I hope we can.”
Despite a sustained plateau of new cases for the last 30 days, Gottlieb warned that the U.S. remains at a “high level of infection,” and that cases in some parts of the country are increasing.
“There's about 20 states where cases are going up on a daily basis, and so are hospitalizations,” he said.
He added, "The most likely scenario is that cases go up, not down. And so we need to think about what it looks like in the country if we have transmission of this virus and we try to get back to some sense of normalcy.”
Gottlieb said that this would mean that vulnerable people who “end up being disadvantaged Americans” and who cannot social distance while working need personal protective equipment.
“So as we go through May, we're likely to see the case count start to creep back up again,” he said.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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