CDC can consider releasing indoor Covid mask mandates now, former FDA chief says

May 10, 2021: -Dr. Scott Gottlieb said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) can begin considering indoor masks to release, as many of the Americans are vaccinated now.

“I think we should lift these restrictions as aggressively as we put them in,” said Gottlieb. “The credibility of public health officials should be preserved to reimplement some of these provisions perhaps as we enter into next winter if we start seeing outbreaks again,” he added.

The Trump administration’s former FDA chief said that he thinks “one way to earn the credibility of the public is to demonstrate that you’re willing to relax these provisions as the situation get better.”

According to Johns Hopkins University, the Covid positivity rate in the U.S. is 3.6%, an all-time low. It’s a stark difference from April 2020, when the positivity rate touched around 23%, which means almost a quarter of all tests administered were positive in the result.

On Thursday, Gottlieb explained in an interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that the overall outlook for the U.S. vaccinations “looks very good,” especially as the FDA is preparing to approve Pfizer’s Covid vaccine for the people aged 12 to 15 soon.

“Even if vaccination rates are slowing, we’re still going to continue to chip away at getting more people vaccinated, but I think that these gains are locked in, and the summer looks very good,” Gottlieb said.