Demonstrations prompt fears of facilitating COVID-19 spread

MIAMI — Rosa Jimenez Cano felt compelled to attend a protest against police brutality to stand with fellow black Americans, then realized afterward how much the novel coronavirus complicated things.

“This can be kind of a tinderbox for COVID,” the 39-year-old venture capitalist said after attending a demonstration in Florida in response to the death of George Floyd by police in Minnesota.

As more beaches, churches, mosques, schools and businesses reopened worldwide, civil unrest in the United States over repeated racial injustice is raising fears of new virus outbreaks in a country that has more infections and deaths than anywhere else in the world.

And it’s not just in the U.S. London hosted a large anti-racism protest Sunday that certainly violated government social distancing rules.

Protests over Floyd’s death have shaken the country from Minneapolis to New York, from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Some have turned into riots and clashes with police, leaving stores in flames and torched cars in the streets.

Floyd, a black man, died May 25 in Minneapolis saying “I can’t breathe” after a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck. It was the latest in a series of deaths of black men and women at the hands of police in America.

Health experts fear that silent carriers of the virus could unwittingly infect others at protests, where people are packed cheek to jowl, many without masks, many chanting, singing or shouting. The virus is dispersed by microscopic droplets in the air when people cough, sneeze, sing or talk.

“There’s no question that when you put hundreds or thousands of people together in close proximity, when we have got this virus all over the streets … it’s not healthy,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Sunday on CNN’S “State of the Union.” “Two weeks from now across America, we’re going to find out whether or not this gives us a spike and drives the numbers back up again or not.”

Even the many protesters wearing masks are not guaranteed protection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cloth masks keep infected people from spreading the virus but are not designed to protect wearers from getting it.