Experts fear bleak autumn as US tops six million Covid-19 cases
● ‘Plan to hold your Thanksgiving by Zoom’ say disease modellers
As the summer of Covid-19 draws to a close, many experts fear an even bleaker autumn and suggest that American families should start planning for Thanksgiving by Zoom.
Because of the many uncertainties, US public health scientists say it is easier to forecast the weather on Thanksgiving Day than to predict how the coronavirus crisis will play out this autumn.
But school reopenings, holiday travel and more indoor activity because of cold er weather could all separately increase transmission of the virus and combine in ways that could multiply the threat, they say.
One certainty is that the virus will still be around, said Jarad Niemi, a disease -modelling expert at Iowa State University.
“We will not have av accine yet and we will not have enough infected individuals for herd immunity to be helpful,” Mr Niemi said.
Autumn may feel like a roller coaster of stop -and-star t restrictions, as communities react to climbing hospital cases, said University of Texas disease modeller Lauren Ancel Meyers. Everyone should get a flu vaccine, she said, because if flu spreads widely, hospitals will begin to buckle and “that will compound the threat of Covid”.
“The decisions we make today will fundamentally impact the safety andf ea sibility of what we can do next month and by Thanksgiving,” Ms Meyers said.
The virus is blamed for more than 180,000 deaths and six million confirmed infections in the US. Worldwide, the death toll is put at almost 850,000, with more than 25 million cases.
The US is recording on average about 900 deaths a day from C ovid -19, and newly confirmed infections per day are running at about 42,000, down from their peak in mid
July, when cases were topping out at more than 70,000.
Around the country, a chicken processing plant in California will close this week for deep cleaning after nearly 400 workers got sick, including eight who died. And college campuses have been hit by outbreaks involving hundreds of students, blamed in some cases on too much partying. Colleges including the University of North Caro lina, Michigan State and Notre Dame have moved instruction online because of clusters on
their campuses. Several vaccines are in advanced testing and researchers hope to have results later this year. But even if a vaccine is declared safe and effective by year’s end, as some expect, there will not be enough for everyone who wants it right away.
The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that opening up societies too quickly amid the coronavirus pandemic was a“recipe for disaster”.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesuss aid“the more control countries have over the virus, the more they can open up.”. He insisted that countries that were serious about opening up must also be serious about suppressing transmission.
Elsewhere in the world, Australia recorded its deadlie st day of the pandemic yesterday as the government urged hot spot Victoria state to announce plans to lift a lockdown on the country’s secondlargest city.
Victoria’s health department reported 41 deaths from Covid-19 and 73 new infections in the latest 24-hour period. While the deaths were a state and national high, the tally of new infections was Victoria’s lowest since 67 new cases were recorded on 30 June in the early weeks of the second wave of the pandemic, which has primarily been concentrated in the state capital Melbourne.
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said only eight of the 41 fatalities occurred in the latest 24-hour period.
The other 33 fatalities occurred in aged care since late July and were rep or ted on Sunday.