Dr. Scott Gottlieb said that the daily new Covid cases won’t ever go to zero

June 29, 2021: -On Monday, the U.S. is “never going to have zero” new daily Covid cases, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC.

“We’re always going to have some level of spread,” the former FDA chief said, which predicts infections will become endemic, which means they will remain present in the American population. The seasonal flu is an endemic respiratory illness.

Gottlieb’s comments come as concerns increase about the Covid delta variant. It’s starting in the U.S., which threatens to cut into the nation’s hard-earned progress to reduce virus prevalence through mass vaccinations and other public health strategies.

On “Squawk Box,” Gottlieb said that while the spread of the delta variant will continue to increase in the U.S., the response to new cases there may not follow the blueprint being used in different parts of the world. He pointed to Israel among the examples.

“Israel is a poor proxy in terms of what they’re doing relative to our situation here because Israel is going for a situation where they want zero Covid,” said Gottlieb. We’re not going to try to get this down to zero cases a day in the U.S.

“Israel is trying to get it down to zero cases a day, so that’s why you see them taking a different kind of measures than us,” he added.

Despite the U.S. being predicted will have “persistent infection,” Gottlieb said the nature of the cases, in the scale and geography, will vary hugely from earlier stages of the pandemic, which is defined as an epidemic gone global.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a situation like we did last winter, where there are 200,000 cases a day. I think we’re talking about tens of thousands of cases, a day, here in the United States as it starts to take hold across the country,” said Gottlieb, leading the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration.

According to Johns Hopkins University data, the highest single day of infections in the U.S. was 300,462 on Jan. 2. The most U.S. Covid deaths in one day were 4,475 on Jan. 12.

According to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data, the U.S. averages just below 12,000 new coronavirus cases each day over the past seven days. That figure is steady compared before a week. The seven-day average of further daily Covid deaths reported in the U.S. is 306 — that’s up 9% compared before a week.

Gottlieb said that the U.S. experiences a new spread of coronavirus, “that represents far low impact than it did a year before because more of the vulnerable people who are going to be more susceptible to this infection now is protected through vaccination.”