Ex-FDA official says the worst of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak to end in January

The worst of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak will come to an end by January, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Thursday.

The virus outbreak in the U.S. will end “one way or the other,” thanks to a vaccine or because enough people will have already been infected and have some immunity to it, Gottlieb explained.

“Either we’ll get to a vaccine or we’ll just have spread enough it’s just going to stop spreading efficiently, so we have a short period of time to get through,” Gottlieb said

“We should do everything we can to preserve what we want of our way of life over that time period to just get through it.”

The former FDA official’s hopes for an effective vaccine or for the U.S. population to achieve so-called herd immunity to control the outbreak both rely on what scientists learn about the role of antibodies. Unfortunately, to date – there is no clear evidence that antibodies give people any protection against being reinfected.