Dr. Scott Gottlieb said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may begin considering lifting mandates on inner masks as more Americans become vaccinated.
“I think we should start lifting these restrictions as aggressively as we put them in place,” said Gottlieb. “We need to maintain the credibility of health officials to potentially re-implement some of these regulations next winter when we see outbreaks again.”
The former FDA chief in the Trump administration added that “the only way to gain public credibility is to show that you are ready to relax these regulations if the situation improves.”
The US Covid positivity rate is 3.6%, an all-time low according to Johns Hopkins University. It’s a big difference from April 2020 when the positivity rate hit nearly 23%, meaning almost a quarter of all tests done were positive.
In an interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” Thursday night, Gottlieb stated that the general outlook for vaccination in the US “looks very good,” especially as the FDA prepares to sell Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for 12-15 Years to admit – age soon.
“Even if vaccination rates slow down, we will continue to try to vaccinate more people … but I think these profits are limited and the summer is looking very good,” said Gottlieb.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, the genetic testing startup Tempus, and the biotech company Illumina. Pfizer has signed a manufacturing agreement with Gilead for Remdesivir. Gottlieb is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean’s Healthy Sail Panel.
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