Rising COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant are already peaking in some states according to new data.
Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC earlier this week that he expected rising U.S. cases to start declining in the next two to three weeks.
Gottlieb pointed to data from the United Kingdom as evidence for what may play out in America.
“I think the more observable trend is what’s going on in the United Kingdom, where cases are clearly coming down at this point. There’s a very clear trend down. It seems like they’ve peaked,” Gottlieb said in an interview on the business network.
The U.K.’s seven-day average of new infections reached roughly 47,700 on July 18, after a steady increase beginning in late May, according to government data. Cases have started to fall in recent days, with 29,173 reported Sunday.
“If the U.K. is turning the corner, it’s a pretty good indication that maybe we’re further into this than we think and maybe we’re two or three weeks away from starting to see our own plateau here in the United States,” said Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration commissioner from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration.
“A lot of the people who are becoming symptomatic are becoming more mildly symptomatic because they’re younger people or they’re people who have been vaccinated and just become asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. So those people aren’t presenting for testing,” added Gottlieb.
On Twitter, Gottlieb also shared charts from four states showing a peak in cases in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee.
Some of the states hardest hit by the Delta surge showing some indication that their epidemic waves could be starting to peak. https://t.co/gwGNlc544i pic.twitter.com/3M566nDLY6
— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) July 28, 2021
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis also recently commented on Delta variant cases, attributing the rise in cases to COVID’s seasonality.
“These things have a pattern. We saw the pattern last summer. It’s similar. I think it started a little later. I think people should just be prepared for that,” DeSantis said, adding that in the rise matched increases last year in other Sunbelt states.
As for the latest cases in North Carolina, the state reported 3.268 new cases on July 29 and a positivity rate of 9.3%.
Over 1 million patients have recovered from COVID-19 since the pandemic began in Marhc 2020, according to the weekly NCDHHS report on recoveries.
NCDHHS estimates a median time to recovery of 14 days from the date of specimen collection for non-fatal COVID-19 cases who were not hospitalized, or if hospitalization status is unknown.
The estimated median recovery time is 28 days from the date of specimen collection for hospitalized non-fatal COVID-19 cases.
