US could face 'perpetual' coronavirus infections as more contagious variants take hold, ex-FDA chief Scott Gottlieb warns

Former FDA Commissioner-designate Dr. Scott Gottlieb.

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• The US could face "perpetual" coronavirus infections as variants take hold, Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Thursday on CNBC.
• Variants first identified in the UK and South Africa are "going to build very quickly if we can't get protective immunity into the population," Gottlieb said.
• "The vaccine is really our only backstop against these variants taking hold," the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner warned.
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Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration, has warned that the US faces "perpetual" coronavirus infections because of more contagious variants spreading through states.

Gottlieb predicted that the number of coronavirus infections would start to come down "dramatically" in the spring, because effectively one-third of the population has already been infected, in addition to people being vaccinated. "The virus is starting to burn itself out," he told CNBC.

However, he said there's a risk that new variants - such as the one first discovered in the UK - could instead take hold. The variant has been discovered in several US states, including New York, Florida, and California, and the Center for Disease Control has recorded 74 cases of the variant.

There are no recorded cases of 501Y.V2, a variant first identified in South Africa, in the US right now, based on the genetic sequencing of positive coronavirus tests.

"These variants are now circulating, and they spread more easily even in the warm months when we really shouldn't have a lot of coronavirus spreading," Gottlieb said, appearing to reference a third variant that is spreading through Brazil in the country's summer months.

"We could be facing a situation where we have perpetual infection heading into the spring and the summer, as these variants get a foothold here."

Gottlieb said that the number of deaths from COVID-19 - the disease caused by coronavirus - and the number of people infected could have peaked. But the numbers will probably continue to build in the coming weeks because there's a delay between people testing positive or becoming sick after they've initially been infected, he said.

Since the first COVID-19 case in the US on January 22, 2020, there have been more than 23 million people infected, and more than 380,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The US has the highest number of new cases per day in the world.

The US has a population of more than 330 million. This means recorded cases fall before below the one-third figure touted by Gottlieb - but he has repeatedly claimed cases are underreported.

So far, more than 11 million Americans have had at least one COVID-19 shot, per the CDC.

He added that the goal now is to immunize as many people as possible to prevent the potential spread of coronavirus variants.

"The vaccine is really our only backstop against these variants taking hold," he said.

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