"This six-foot distancing requirement has probably been the single costliest mitigation tactic that we've employed in response to COVID … and it really wasn't based on clear science. … We should have re-adjudicated this much earlier," he said in an interview with CNBC.

Amid the relaxation of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus guidelines—including one from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) saying it's safe for schoolchildren to have three-foot distancing—Gottlieb suggested that masks may also be safely removed.

"We now know that the vaccines dramatically reduce your chance of both contracting COVID and becoming symptomatic to the point where you are going to have a bad outcome; we also know it reduces asymptomatic disease and reduces transmission … we are seeing that in the data," he said.