( Reuters) – A 2nd wave of the coronavirus is expected to hit the United States next winter season and might strike much harder than the very first because it would likely reach the start of influenza season, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Avoidance cautioned on Tuesday.
” There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our country next winter will actually be much more challenging than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield informed the Washington Post in an interview.
As the current break out continues to taper off, as shown by a current decrease in hospitalization rates and other indications, authorities require to prepare for a likely revival in the months ahead.
” We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he stated, and the combination would put even higher stress on the nation’s healthcare system than the very first outbreak.
The infection, which triggers an extremely contagious and potentially fatal respiratory health problem dubbed COVID-19, emerged late last year in main China. The very first known U.S. infection, a travel-related case, was identified on Jan. 20 in Washington state near Seattle.
Ever since, nearly 810,000 people have actually checked favorable in the United States, and more than 45,000 have actually died from the disease.
Redfield and other public health authorities credit drastic stay-at-home orders and extensive business and school closings across the nation for slowing the spread of infections. The restrictions have also stifled American commerce while tossing at least 22 million individuals out of work over the past four weeks.
Even as the lockdown is gradually relieved, Redfield worried the significance of individuals continuing to practice social distancing among one another.
At the same time, he said, public health authorities should significantly increase a testing system to recognize those who are infected and to find their close individual interactions through contact tracing.
Inquired about the current flurry of street demonstrations of stay-at-home orders and requires states to be “freed” from such restrictions – as President Donald Trump has actually advocated on Twitter – Redfield informed the Post: “It’s not helpful.”
Structure an across the country contact tracing network, key to avoiding recently detected cases from becoming big outbreaks, positions a significant obstacle since it is so labor extensive, requiring a workforce that by some price quotes would need as numerous as 300,000 personnel.
Redfield said the CDC is talking about with state authorities the possibility of enlisting and training workers from the U.S. Census Bureau, and volunteers from Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, to produce a brand-new contact tracing workforce.
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Costs Tarrant and Lincoln Banquet.
