The pandemic may be stabilizing in Arizona, Florida, and Texas, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb.
“It looks like Arizona, Texas, and probably Florida at the very least are starting to hit a plateau,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said Monday morning on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
Available intensive care unit beds, an important measure of the pressure on hospitals, appear to have either stabilized or improved in those states. In Arizona, the percentage of ICU beds available have remained at 13%-14% over the last seven days, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. About 18% of ICU beds are available in Florida, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. That has hovered between 15%-18% for the last week. Texas Health and Human Services reports 1,243 ICU beds are available in the Lone Star state, up from 963 a week ago.
On Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said Texas was improving.
“We are turning the situation in the state of Texas,” Abbott said. “It’s just going to take a little while, but we’re going to be fine.”
Gottlieb warned that despite the improvement in Arizona, Florida, and Texas, the pandemic is worsening elsewhere.
“Even as these states come down other states look like they are heating up and so they’ll start to offset the gains we are making in the sunbelt,” he said.
