For months, most of the United States’ coronavirus cases were concentrated in the Northeast: Massachusetts followed New York and New Jersey as the third most affected state in the nation.
But while those states have controlled their outbreaks, this week’s outbreaks in the South and Southwest soared. Florida and Texas were even forced to reverse some of their reopening measures.
Dr. Ashish Jha, who heads the Harvard Institute of Global Health, said Saturday that this is due to the reopening before the critical testing infrastructure is established.
“This is happening because, in much of the country, around Memorial Day and the weeks that followed, we opened while we still had a lot of cases,” Jha said in “TODAY” in response to a chart showing the amount Daily coronavirus cases resurface in the US while remaining low in Europe.
The United States did not install the type of robust testing and contact tracing that public health experts recommended when initial closure measures were implemented, according to Jha.
“We open too fast. We open bars, we open nightclubs, and it is the combination of everything that has brought us to where we are today,” he said.
He said it has been “frustrating because the closure was so painful,” noting the millions of jobs lost and the time the children had to spend at home.
“I am very concerned that we have wasted that time as a country, our political leaders did not do what was necessary and we are now in a difficult situation,” he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, spoke of the increasing number of virus cases in the US Fauci urged Americans to do their part to stop the spread , saying: “A risk to you is not only isolated for you because if you become infected, you are part, innocently or inadvertently, of propagating the dynamic process of a pandemic.”
It also cast some doubt on the big sports leagues they can restart, a bright spot for many Americans.
The NBA and MLS are planning to take their teams to Walt Disney World in Florida to host games in a closed environment, while MLB and NHL are drawing up similar plans built around the locations. But Florida is seeing a record daily increase in cases, nearly 9,000 on Friday alone, and Jha said her advice to league commissioners is that it will only be safe to have games where there are no outbreaks.
“It will be very, very difficult to make everyone disappear and make sure that no one is affected,” he said.
How the coronavirus has grown in each state: in 1 graph
New York has quickly become the epicenter of the outbreak of the American coronavirus. This table shows the cumulative number of cases by state per number of days since the tenth case.
He also noted that while the virus so far appears to primarily kill people 60 and older, its long-term effects on the health of people of all ages are unknown but potentially debilitating, and if he were an NBA player, He would be concerned about his longevity if he contracted the virus.
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