Former FDA commissioner on summer COVID surge
WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA Commissioner and Pfizer board member, spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the summer COVID surge.
Last week, a new booster shot was approved, with Brennan asking Gottlieb if the approval was "playing catch-up," with Gottlieb saying:
"I don't think so. I think the timing is about right in terms of rolling out the vaccine and the tests that will be available for people in the winter time. Look, we've had these summer surges and in a subsequent winter surge now a couple of seasons in a row. So I think we need to start to understand this is probably the predictable pattern for this virus for the foreseeable future. It's going to be hard to have a vaccine available earlier than they have had it this year they've got the vaccine out earlier than they have in the past, in part to try to time it with the flu vaccine, so that when people go into the pharmacy they can get both a COVID vaccine and a flu vaccine, which I think is going to be important for a lot of older Americans. It is the case that we do see these summer surges, and we will have to think about how we protect people better in the future. I think the idea of having a dual vaccine, having two vaccines per year, that may be a difficult thing, just from a manufacturing and a production standpoint."
When asked if the booster will protect people from the KP-3 variant even if the booster is for the KP-2 variant, Gottlieb said:
"Yeah. So the data right now, it's preclinical data. So it's data looking at whether or not the antibodies that are produced as a result of getting vaccinated from KP-2 will also neutralize this KP-3 strain. That data looks encouraging, and we rely on that data, that neutralizing antibody data, we've historically relied on it, and it's been a good proxy for how effective the vaccine is going to be. So this vaccine should protect against KP-3. About a third of the cases are KP-3 right now, I don't believe that the winter surge, and we're likely to see a winter surge of COVID, is going to be from KP-3. Right now. If you look across the country, COVID cases are starting to decline in most parts of the country. Perhaps the Northeast is still rising. Parts of the West states like Utah and Colorado, but we should be through most of this summer surge. Cases should start to continue to come down, and in what ultimately emerges in the wintertime, we don't know yet."
To watch more of Brennan's interview with Gottlieb, click here.
