The following is a transcript of an interview with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Aug. 25, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re joined by former FDA commissioner and Pfizer board member, Dr Scott Gottlieb, good to have you here. So this is a Covid summer surge. The CDC says we may be at the peak or about to pass it now., The Biden administration has just made free testing available. That’ll come at the end of the month. The new booster shot was just approved. Is this just playing catch up here?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: I don’t think so. I think the timing is about right in terms of rolling out the vaccine and the tests that will be available for people in the winter time. Look, we’ve had these summer surges and in a subsequent winter surge now a couple of seasons in a row. So I think we need to start to understand this is probably the predictable pattern for this virus for the foreseeable future. It’s going to be hard to have a vaccine available earlier than they have had it this year they’ve got the vaccine out earlier than they have in the past, in part to try to time it with the flu vaccine, so that when people go into the pharmacy they can get both a Covid vaccine and a flu vaccine, which I think is going to be important for a lot of older Americans. It is the case that we do see these summer surges, and we will have to think about how we protect people better in the future. I think the idea of having a dual vaccine, having two vaccines per year, that may be a difficult thing, just from a manufacturing and a production standpoint.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So this booster is about KP-2 two variant. KP-3 is what is swirling around now, apparently it will still protect you?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Yeah. So the data right now, it’s preclinical data. So it’s data looking at whether or not the antibodies that are produced as a result of getting vaccinated from KP-2 will also neutralize this KP-3 strain. That data looks encouraging, and we rely on that data, that neutralizing antibody data, we’ve historically relied on it, and it’s been a good proxy for how effective the vaccine is going to be. So this vaccine should protect against KP-3. About a third of the cases are KP-3 right now, I don’t believe that the winter surge, and we’re likely to see a winter surge of Covid, is going to be from KP-3. Right now. If you look across the country, Covid cases are starting to decline in most parts of the country. Perhaps the Northeast is still rising. Parts of the West states like Utah and Colorado, but we should be through most of this summer surge. Cases should start to continue to come down, and in what ultimately emerges in the wintertime, we don’t know yet.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So when do you get it the vaccine, that is, and the guidance of the CDC is, once your fever breaks, count five days and you’re good to go, that’s not necessarily going to stop transmission is it?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Yeah, look, I think people who get covid and recover from Covid probably should use an antigen test to see when they’re no longer infectious. If you’re still registering on an antigen test, you’re likely still shedding some virus, although your infectivity probably has come down a lot when you’re five, six days out. I think for Americans who are going into settings where there’s people who are at risk, where they work in confined spaces, where people may be vulnerable, they may need to take some added precautions if they’re recovering from an infection and still testing positive on the antigen test. There’s no really golden rule in terms of when people aren’t infected anymore. If you want to be vigilant, use an antigen test to look for that in terms of when to get the vaccine. For most Americans, getting it sometime in September, maybe early October, is going to be sufficient to try to protect them from that winter surge. I think a lot of Americans who are worried about the current surge, and there’s still a lot of virus around, could go out and get the vaccine right now, because they could still catch covid from this current wave of infection. For people who have been infected, they likely have several months of good protection from that recent infection, so they may want to wait a little bit longer that way. When they do get vaccinated, maybe late October, that vaccine will extend further, because we know that the immunity provided by the vaccines only lasts a defined period of time, 3,4, 5, months,
MARGARET BRENNAN: And it’s- it’s a serious strain, I’ll say that the CDC said that they saw a high number of children under five going to the ER Why are kids being impacted like that?
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, part of that is that kids don’t have baseline immunity, so a lot of adults have baseline immunity. So when you look at the statistics on who’s going to the emergency room Overall, about 2.4% of all emergency room visits are for Covid right now, but for the cohort over the age of 65 that’s about 3.4%, so 3.4% of all people over the age of 65 who go to the emergency room for any reason are going there for Covid. In children under the age of five, it’s 5.8% so a higher proportion of kids who go to the emergency room are going to the emergency room for Covid. They’re getting sick because they don’t have baseline immunity. They haven’t been infected before they haven’t been vaccinated. I think part of it’s also that parents are more likely to take a sick child to the emergency room than take themselves to the emergency room. So that’s some of what’s baked into that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s hard to get a kid vaccinated, though.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: It’s hard to find a place that vaccinates toddlers. So if you think of CVS, for example, most of their pharmacies won’t vaccinate toddlers. It’s only the pharmacies that have been at clinics. A lot of pediatricians don’t stock the under five vaccine because a lot of parents aren’t asking for it. If your pediatrician doesn’t have the vaccine you want to vaccinate your child, you can ask them to order it, and it should be available within 24 to 48 hours.
MARGARET BRENNAN All right. Dr. Gottlieb, I have so many more questions for you, but we have to leave it there for right now.
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Thanks a lot.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll be right back.