“We really need to get this vaccine out more quickly, because this is really our only tool,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb talks with Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” in Washington D.C. on March 8, 2020 (Photo by Chris Usher/CBS via Getty Images)
On Sunday, 129,229 people were in U.S. hospitals with coronavirus, but the day marked only the sixth highest in pandemic history, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
Experts have long said the best defenses against surging cases are preventative measures like masks and social distancing, as well as widespread vaccination. So far, at least 22.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been distributed and nearly 6.7 million have made their way into patients’ arms. Health officials had hoped to get 20 million people vaccinated at the start of the new year, but the administration of vaccines has undergone delays and roadblocks.
“We need to acknowledge that it’s not working,” Gottlieb said Sunday of the vaccination plan. “We need to hit the reset and adopt a new strategy in trying to get that out to patients.”
Gottlieb’s warning came just days after the U.S. crossed a grim threshold for the first time — reporting more than 4,000 new COVID-19 deaths in a single day on Thursday. Since the pandemic began, more than 374,000 people have died in the U.S. and more than 22.4 million people have been infected, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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