Oct. 20 (UPI) -- A former top health official in the Trump administration has said the United States is about a week away from seeing a substantial rise in COVID-19 cases.
Amid a steady rise in U.S. cases over the past month, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said there are no more "backstops" to help control the outbreak.
"The summer was a backstop, of sorts, to the spring surge, and we have no therapeutic backstop," Gottlieb told CNBC Monday night.
"The fall and winter season is when this coronavirus is going to want to spread."
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Gottlieb noted that the United States is about a week away from seeing a "rapid acceleration" in cases.
"We can look to happier days, but these are going to be some tough months ahead."
Other health experts, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, have agreed that the coming months will be difficult.
Updated data Tuesday from Johns Hopkins University showed the United States added almost another 60,000 cases and about 450 deaths on Monday. Over the past week, the national average has been more than 58,000 cases per day.
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been about 8.22 million cases and 220,200 deaths in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins.
In Kansas, 10 residents at a nursing home have died of COVID-19 and all the others have tested positive, officials said. Residents have been quarantined in their rooms and outside visitors are not allowed.
County officials are working with the state health department to prevent further outbreaks at the privately-owned nursing home in Norton, about 320 miles west of Kansas City.
Some nursing home staff have also tested positive.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed that the state will review any new COVID-19 vaccine before it's distributed to residents.
Newsom named several doctors and scientists to the review panel and said science, not politics, will determine the strategy for distributing any vaccine.
"California leads in science and by bringing together our state's brightest scientific minds, we can ensure that any vaccine distributed here meets safety requirements," he said in a statement.
President Donald Trump has previously said a vaccine would be ready before the Nov. 3 election, raising alarm that politics are playing a role in the process. Scientists and vaccine developers have said the earliest any vaccine could be ready is the end of the year, but more likely sometime in 2021.
A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation last month found that 62% of U.S. adults are worried that White House pressure could lead the FDA to approve a vaccine before it's determined to be safe and effective.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month announced he, too, would create a statewide task force of health experts to review the federal government's COVID-19 vaccine approvals.
