Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is pushing back on President Trump’s repeated comments that the U.S. is “rounding the corner” on coronavirus.
Gottlieb told CBS’s “Face The Nation” o Sunday that “things are getting worse.”
{mosads}“Things are getting worse around the country,” he said. “I think Thanksgiving is really going to be an inflection point. I think December is probably going to be our toughest month.”
Gottlieb said states are “seeing accelerating spread” and the U.S. is “at the beginning of what looks like exponential growth in a lot of states,” including those in the Midwest, the Great Lakes region, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Wisconsin.
“These are very worrisome trends,” he said. “There are about 23 states right now that are accelerating the spread.”
The former FDA official said 15 states have a positivity rate above 10 percent and all of the states are experiencing “an expanding epidemic right now.”
The New York Times documented a record high for new U.S. cases confirmed in a single-day on Friday, at nearly 100,000.
The newspaper categorizes 41 states and territories as places where new cases are “higher” and “staying high.” Eight states and territories were considered places where new cases are “lower but going up.” Almost 30 states and territories are experiencing increasing death tolls.
Overall, the U.S. ranks as the country with the most cases and deaths, with more than 9.1 million cases and 230,732 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.