Former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb: Covid Vaccine Supply Will Be Greater Than the Demand ‘Sooner Than We Think’

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned that the United States will soon face a scenario where the supply of coronavirus vaccines will outweigh the demand for it — before the population is immunized.

Gottlieb appeared Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he was asked about a Wall Street Journal op-ed he recently wrote about how to make sure Covid vaccines and treatments stay sufficiently advanced to counteract the new strains of the virus. The piece hypothesizes that the country may eventually reach a point in April when “supply will start exceeding demand. The challenge won’t be how to ration a scarce resource, but how to reach patients reluctant to get vaccinated.”

While the op-ed concerns itself with why Americans would hesitate to receive the vaccine beyond the scarcity question, Gottlieb was asked how long he thinks it would take to see a reversal of supply and demand.

“I think it’s going to happen all at once,” Gottlieb said. “This isn’t going to be a gradual transition, and I think people are gonna be surprised that it’s gonna happen sooner than we think.”

Gottlieb continued by predicting an upsurge in the coronavirus vaccine supply once more pharmaceutical companies are cleared to bring theirs to the public market in the coming months. He further outlined how he expects vaccine access will be offered with greater public availability as the demand reduces.

I think once you get into those kinds of numbers, once you’re looking at over close to 200 million vaccines available for the first injections, I think we’re going to run out of demand. I think we’re going to run out of demand sooner than we think, and I suspect sometime by March or the end of March, we’ll have to make this generally available. That doesn’t mean everyone can get a vaccine on April 1st, but I think everyone’s gonna be able to go online and get an appointment sooner than we think.

Watch above, via CNBC.

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