Gottlieb says downward trend in virus infections "likely to continue" - CBS News

Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration during the Trump administration, predicted Sunday that declining COVID-19 infection rates are "likely to continue" due to more Americans receiving their vaccines and the amount of people who have already contracted the coronavirus.

"This has taken a tragic toll on the United States, but we should be optimistic, in my view," Gottlieb said in an interview with "Face the Nation." "I think we're going to continue to see infection rates decline into the spring and the summer.

I think these trends are likely to continue.".

"With rising vaccination rates and also the fact that we've infected about a third of the public, that's enough protective immunity that we're likely to see these trends continue.".

With both the Trump and now Biden administrations pushing China to share more data about the origins of the coronavirus, Gottlieb said Beijing should make available information on antibody tests in people who worked at a lab in Wuhan, China, where the first cases of the coronavirus were detected, as well as the original strains to allow scientists to study how the coronavirus evolved over time.