People await the health assessment record before entering Jackson Memorial Hospital, as Miami-Dade County alleviates some of the blocking measures implemented during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Miami, Florida, USA, June 18, 2020.
Marco Bello | Reuters
The United States needs a unified approach to address growing cases of coronavirus infection, and people should not have a false sense of security that a vaccine is just around the corner, infectious disease experts said Monday.
The United States recently reported a record increase in cases, with peaks observed in states that are underway in their reopening process. Over the holiday weekend of July 4, Florida and Texas faced a flurry of cases, leaving state and local governments struggling to gain a head start on containment efforts.
Still, the increase in the number of cases has caused many states to change their recovery plans, delay reopening measures and reintroduce restrictions on companies.
“What we are seeing, certainly, is that this virus is spreading across states like a wildfire,” said Joshua Barocas, an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University and an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center. .
He explained that states should impose stricter restrictions on indoor meetings. She said the increase in places like Florida and Texas should serve as a warning to other states, such as New Jersey or Massachusetts, where the spread of the infection appears to have slowed by now.
“What we really need is a comprehensive and unified approach to this,” he said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia”. “We need people at all levels of government and society to support a strategy, and that strategy, really at this point, while we wait for vaccines and effective treatments, we need it to be a preventive strategy.”
He clarified that this does not mean a total closure or that people can never leave their homes again.
“It simply means avoiding sharing elements, physically distancing yourself when you are in public, wearing a mask: these are fairly simple and fairly easy to follow things that will really avoid more waves and more economic turmoil, to be completely frank,” Barocas said.
The United States has the highest number of reported cases and death toll in the world: more than 2.8 million people have been infected and nearly 130,000 have died from Covid-19.
The vaccine will take time
Several vaccines for the disease are being tested, and many of them are undergoing clinical trials, which means they are being tested in human volunteers.
Barocas said it takes time and many steps to develop a vaccine and that “we are not necessarily too close to ‘magic bullet’ treatment either.” That makes it more crucial for people to “play on the same team” by doing their part in hand washing, social distancing and wearing masks, she added.
We will be struggling with this virus for a long time without a vaccine and I don’t want people to have a false sense of security that a vaccine is just around the corner even though we are making great strides towards one.
Amesh Adalja
scholar at the Ohns Hopkins University Health Safety Center
Even if a vaccine is developed rapidly, there probably won’t be enough to “make a dent” in the virus by the end of the year or early 2021, according to Amesh Adalja.
Adalja, an infectious disease expert, is a principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Health Safety Center.
“I think we may have a few batches of vaccines at that time, but we are not going to have enough to vaccinate the American or world population,” he said on CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia”.
“We will be struggling with this virus for a long time without a vaccine, and I don’t want people to have a false sense of security that a vaccine is just around the corner even though we are making great strides towards one,” added Adalja. .
He also explained that breaking transmission chains in places like Florida, Texas and Arizona, where outbreaks have emerged, is crucial to prevent hospitals from flooding with patients.
Globally, more than 11.4 million people have been infected and more than half a million have died, according to Hopkins data.
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