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Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, encouraged Americans to observe coronavirus safety precautions in the next few months. Gottlieb mentioned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that people should not let their guard down at this specific time. He added that we should try to remain vigilant and careful these last two or three months since this is considered the most challenging season.
He specifically emphasized to be watchful about Halloween and Thanksgiving parties because this may promote COVID transmission.
“Kids are at less risk than adults at both transmitting the infection and having a bad outcome if they do get infected, but that doesn’t mean they’re impervious to infection. I think at a time that we’re trying to preserve the ability of kids to go to school and learn, either at home or in the classroom, having big parties around Halloween doesn’t seem prudent to me… We’re in the final stages of the acute phase of this pandemic. We’re going to be still grappling with COVID next year, but the acute phase of the pandemic was a 2020 event. Have the same prudence around Halloween and Thanksgiving this year. We’ve protected people for a long period. We’ve got two or three months to go here, and we need to be careful.”
Dr. Scott Gottlieb
Even the World Health Organization (WHO) gave emphasis that sacrifice is necessary to control the worsening COVID-19 outbreak.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans have been starting to wear face masks more when in public places. But Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard University professor, said wearing a face mask is not, by itself, enough to decrease the transmission without other precautions dramatically.
“We’re starting to be a lot better. The key issue is then we take them off when we go to restaurants or other indoor settings.”
Dr. Atul Gawande
Gawande also said Americans have lessened their avoidance from crowds while being indoors, which has been a problem.
“That’s the big thing that has changed. We went from three-quarters of people saying that they were avoiding gatherings indoors with friends and family, to now it’s under 45% who are avoiding those settings. That’s where a great deal of spread is happening.”
Dr. Gawande
The U.S. recorded the highest daily new cases of 88,521 on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University. According to Hopkins’ data, nearly 9 million coronavirus cases have been reported in the U.S. during the pandemic, killing at least 228,675 people.
Gottlieb also mentioned that while the death rate of coronavirus patients has improved since March and April, the country might still see overwhelming death counts in the weeks ahead because of the number of new infections. Vaccines for the coronavirus are yet to be released in the future.
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