An illustration of the new coronavirus COVID-19. Image courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Thursday it will be “challenging” for his home state of Connecticut to continue maintaining its current, relatively low COVID-19 infection rate by this coming fall and winter, considering the large amount traffic in and out of the region.

In the meantime, the father of three said it makes sense to have students return to school for at least a little while and get as much in-person learning and socialization as possible before switching to distance learning for the remainder of the year if the number of cases begins to become more widespread.

“And that point may come,” he said during a briefing with Gov. Ned Lamont. “I would think at some point, this is going become epidemic again in some fashion in the Northeast. We just have so much infection around the country.”

Gottlieb predicted the country will be grappling with COVID-19 for at least six more months, until there is a vaccine, possibly by early 2021.

“We bought ourselves a couple of months in the Northeast because of the mitigation steps we took … Hopefully we can extend that as long as possible, but this is going to be touch and go between now and the end of the year,” he said.

Connecticut currently has among the lowest infection rates in the country, slightly less than 1 percent, Lamont said Thursday.

“Is it going to stay that way? I think it’s going to be challenging for a state that has as much movement in and out, as this region does, this whole region, to avoid a lot of introductions, given the amount of infection there is around the country,” Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb warned Connecticut will likely see more COVID-19 infection around the same time the traditional influenza season begins, which he predicted will put a lot of pressure on the state’s health care and testing systems.

As of Thursday, there have been 47,750 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Connecticut and 4,389 COVID-associated deaths, an increase of nine since Wednesday. Meanwhile, 66 patients were being treated for COVID-19, a decrease of one since Wednesday.