The epidemic will get away throughout the US at totally different occasions, says Dr. Scott Gottlieblieb

Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC that he expects the rising U.S. coronavirus cases associated with the highly communicable Delta variant to decline in a few weeks.

“Probably in two or three weeks, I think we’ll probably be about three weeks behind the UK,” said the former FDA chief in the Trump administration.

“Britain is clearly on a downward trend … I would expect some of the southern states that have really been the epicenter of this epidemic to begin to change in the next two or three weeks.”

While the epidemic continues to spread across the southern states, the pace of expansion is showing signs of slowing. Gottlieb told The News with Shepard Smith that the slowdown is a sign that these southern states may be peaking.

However, Gottlieb cautioned that the northern states could start seeing more delta spreads if rates drop in the south.

“Here in this country it will now be much more regionalized. I don’t expect the density of delta expansion in states like New York or Michigan to be as high as in the south,” said Gottlieb. “We have more immunization, we had more pre-infections up there, but you’re going to see cases increase, even in states that have a lot of immunization, just probably not as severe.”

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the board of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion Inc., and biotechnology company Illumina. He is also co-chair of the Healthy Sail Panel of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean.