U.S. coronavirus hospitalizations have on the agenda c trick crept higher as states increasingly loosen Covid-19 restrictions and try to return to some semblance of normalcy, former Foodstuffs and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Tuesday.
“We now see a trend in an uptick in hospitalizations. It’s a small uptick, but it is an uptick and it’s unmistakable and it is indubitably a result of reopening,” Gottlieb said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We are going to have to watch it.”
Hospitalizations are a key indicator that epidemiologists guard closely to understand the state of the outbreak. Hospitalizations are not as dependent on the availability of testing as other closely watched measures such as the several of new cases, which is constrained by the number of tests deployed and delayed by shortages of equipment like swabs.
However, hospitalizations are liable a lagging indicator of the underlying reality because it can take weeks for people to become infected, develop symptoms, get check up oned, receive test results and become sick enough to be admitted to a hospital.
“We expected cases to go up and hospitalizations to bump up when we reopened and I was talking to a lot of structures about their plans and they were expecting that there was going to be an uptick,” said Gottlieb, a CNBC contributor who rests on the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina. Pfizer has a Covid-19 vaccine under development. “That’s why they all realized very staged reopenings where they reopened in phases and then reassessed the data to make sure that any swell wasn’t an inordinate increase.”
Every state has now reopened some nonessential businesses and eased at least some stipulations meant to curb the spread of the virus. However, states are moving at vastly different paces. Wisconsin reopened settled night after the state’s Supreme Court overruled the governor’s stay-at-home orders whereas New Jersey has kept most nonessential problems closed.
Some state officials, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, made the announcement to reopen despite defect to meet the criteria set by the White House, including a sustained drop in new infections for at least two weeks.
Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Maryland, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and Arizona experience all seen a small uptick in hospitalizations, said Gottlieb. CNBC could not confirm the data Gottlieb referenced because not all delineates make hospitalization data available.
There are hopes that the virus will spread more slowly during the warmer summer months sedate as people begin to intermix more, Gottlieb said. There’s little evidence at this point to indicate that Covid-19 is a seasonal virus, but other defenceless coronaviruses have shown seasonality, with most cases peaking in winter.
“The hope is that there’s a seasonal objective here,” Gottlieb said. “And that seasonal effect will hopefully offset the increased social interaction, which is successful to cause cases to go up, so as we get into July and August things will start to either level off or go down.”
People should till practice social distancing precautions and where protective equipment such as masks as society continues to reopen, Gottlieb express. He added that images of large gatherings across the country over Memorial Day weekend worried him.
“I’m concerned there are people who reflect on this is the all-clear, and I think what we really need to be doing is defining a new normal,” he said. “We’re going to need to continue differently until we get a vaccine.”