Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Sunday that vaccine supply will outpace demand in many states within three weeks as he urged the White House to surge doses to hot spots such as Michigan.
April 11 (UPI) — Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and current Pfizer board member, said Sunday that the United States’ vaccine supply will soon outstrip demand. Gottlieb told CBS News’ Face the Nation that the United States should stand by its plan to deliver doses to states based on population side as he expects supply to exceed demand in as early as three weeks. « I think a lot of states are going to see themselves with excess supply and excess appointments. So it’s going to be a shame and look back in retrospect and realize that we probably should have put more vaccine into some of these hot spots to snuff them out earlier, » he said. The United States has reported a total of 31,189,567 COVID-19 cases and 562,059 deaths since the start of the pandemic as of Sunday — both the highest totals in the world — while reporting 66,533 infections and 709 fatalities from Saturday, according to data gathered by Johns Hopkins University. The nation has also administered a total of 183,467,709 vaccine doses with 35.3% of the population having received at least one dose and 21.3% fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gottlieb’s comments came amid a surge of virus cases in Michigan as the state, which does not report COVID-19 data on Sunday, tallied 6,892 new cases and 74 deaths on Saturday, after reporting 7,834 cases Friday for a total of 738,023 cases and 16,500 cases since the start of the pandemic.
