“We know that people are tired of being locked up at home … but the cases increased after Memorial Day,” said Dean Sidelinger, the Oregon state health officer. “We don’t want the same thing to happen during the Independence Day holiday.”
The July 4 weekend could be the “perfect storm” for a peak in coronavirus cases, said Dr. Joshua Barocas, an infectious disease doctor at Boston Medical Center.
“The combination of travel, the combination of reopening, perhaps in some cases, too soon, and the combination of people who do not necessarily follow some of these preventive guidelines,” he said.
Keep bars closed for schools to reopen in the fall
The virus has killed some 128,000 people and infected more than 2.6 million across the country, according to Johns Hopkins University.
With the growing number of new cases, swift action will now determine what will happen in the coming months, experts said. If governors want schools to reopen in the fall, they must contain the amount of coronavirus in their communities now, Dr. Ashish Jha told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“When they understand the options in clear terms, schools this fall or bars now, those are their options … I think more and more governors, even in places that don’t have big outbreaks, are realizing that maybe we can avoid the bars in the summer and fall, if that gives us a better chance to open schools this fall, “said Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
“The biggest determinant of whether we are going to be able to open schools and keep schools open is the amount of virus in the community,” added Jha. “So when I look at large parts of the country right now, and I think if that is the level of virus that we have in September, we will not be able to keep schools open.”
To do that, officials have to go beyond keeping some public places closed.
“You can’t have bars and gyms open. I’m not sure you have restaurants open. You have to wear mandatory masks and you have to push surveillance, testing, tracking, everything we have I’ve been talking about,” Jha said.
The virus shows signs of resurgence.
As new cases emerge and states rethink reopens, some areas that have progressed against the virus are showing signs of a resurgence.
California was one of the first states to close with some of the strictest measures. On Wednesday, it reported 9,740 new cases, a number that included more than 3,800 previously unreported cases over a five-day period, authorities said.
More than 28 million Californians live in counties where dining rooms at restaurants, bars, and other indoor facilities are ordered to remain closed as Covid-19 cases increase. The closings affect 72% of the state’s population and include restaurants, breweries, museums, zoos and movie theaters for at least three weeks, Governor Gavin Newsom said.
“Simply put, the spread of this virus continues at a particularly worrying rate,” Newsom said.
Michigan is shutting down indoor bar service in most of the lower state.
Other states, such as Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, and Nevada, which have seen more than a 50% increase in cases, have paused or reversed their reopening plans.
“If you have bars, you have music. If you have music, you want to socialize. And you want to speak louder than usual in order to overcome background noise,” said Dr. Ricardo Franco, an assistant professor of medicine at the University. Alabama in Birmingham.
All of those factors can increase the spread, Franco added.
There is still an opportunity to change things
While the predictions are dire, the United States can reverse the growing coronavirus pandemic, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert.
“It doesn’t have to be 100,000 cases a day,” he told NPR on Wednesday. “I used that number because I wanted to shake people up.”
In testimony before a congressional committee on Tuesday, he said that without intervention, such as wearing masks and social distancing, the United States could see up to 100,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day. The country is already seeing an average of 40,000 new cases per day.
“If you leave the virus on your own devices, it will take off on you. Controlling an outbreak is what we do to oppose the outbreak dynamics. And if you do things that essentially improve the outbreak, then you are part of the problem. You are not part of the solution, “Fauci said.
The United States can cut the numbers, but it will require people to do things differently and follow the guidelines, he said.
CNN’s Shelby Lin Erdman, Cheri Mossburg, Ralph Ellis and Amanda Watts contributed to this report.
.
