Gottlieb: We need a ‘better system in place’ to distribute coronavirus treatments

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday the U.S. needs a better system for distributing coronavirus treatments.

“I think we need to get a better system in place. If the government is going to take control of the supply of these kinds of therapeutics and they don’t necessarily have to do that they chose to do that, they need to have a good system in place for allocation,” Gottlieb said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” when asked about the Trump administrations roll out of the coronavirus drug Remdesivir. 

.@ScottGottliebMD on administration’s roll out of #Remdesivir:

“I think we need to get a better system in place. If the government is going to take control of the supply of these therapeutics…they need to have a good system in place for allocation,” he tells @margbrennan pic.twitter.com/RC0ANlDO3Z

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) May 10, 2020

Gottlieb said Gilead, the pharmaceutical company behind the drug, gave the federal government half a million doses of Remdesivir. The government distributed 4,000 in New York City, the epicenter of the outbreak, Gottlieb said. 

{mosads}“I think they should have been trying to push out as many doses as fast as possible, because more supplies [are] coming into the market. There’s no reason to hoard it or hold onto it,” Gottlieb said. 

“Hopefully when they start to contemplate the next therapeutic, and will be more therapeutics in the fall or a vaccine, and how they allocate that they’re going to have a better system in place based on clinical need,” he added.