Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that the Omicron variant “extends the timeline” of when Covid goes from a health emergency to something the world learns to live with.
“I still think that this will be a year of transition,” said Gottlieb on Tuesday evening in “The News with Shepard Smith”. We are likely to “move from a pandemic to an endemic phase”, but later.
On November 5, the former FDA chief and current Pfizer board member told CNBC that Covid’s pandemic phase in the US could be over by early January.
Recent studies from South Africa said omicron significantly reduced antibody protection in patients with the Pfizer / BioNTech Covid vaccine.
However, on Wednesday morning, Pfizer said its own research had shown a third shot of its neutralized omicron with Covid vaccine.
Before this news, Gottlieb said the best thing to do was to get vaccinated and boosted.
Gottlieb told Shepard Smith that he made this prediction when it was believed that Delta was the one to be most concerned about. The doctor said, however, that Omicron represents a “divergent evolution” of Covid and could alert the path of its spread in the US and around the world, “even if the population has high immunity to infections”.
That could happen in South Africa right now, said Gottlieb, who headed the Food and Drug Administration during the tenure of former President Donald Trump.
“The reason you are seeing fewer serious illnesses and fewer hospital admissions compared to cases is that many people in South Africa have been infected with Delta,” he said. “So if you get infected again with this variant, your delta immunity may not protect you from infection, but rather protects you from symptomatic illnesses and serious consequences.”
Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, said Tuesday that Omicron appears to be milder, but it could also spread faster, leaving more room for variant development later.
The South African Medical Research Council said on Saturday that most hospital patients with the new variant do not need supplemental oxygen. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Senior Medical Advisor to the White House, said preliminary data like this is “a bit encouraging”.
Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the board of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion, and biotechnology company Illumina. He is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings ′ and Royal Caribbean’s Healthy Sail Panel.
