COVID not over until we have vaccine
states reopening their economies?
A. Some states are struggling. Arizona, South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida and Texas are states that, again, either never really turned the corner or had a period of quiet and are now starting to look a little bit worse. It does stand to reason that some of that is attributable to reopening.
Q. And the mass protests against police brutality?
A. I think it’s probably a little bit early to say that the protests are playing a big role. The time from infection to ICU admission is about three weeks. It’s midJune now, (so) maybe (we’ll know more) by the end of the month or early July. Q. How worried are you?
A. Some factors about the protests mitigate the risk. They’re outdoors. And for many people, from what I gather, it was possible to social distance. Not everyone did. You certainly saw clusters. And so, although crowds are our concern for transmission, certainly it’s a little bit less concerning to me than large indoor gatherings would be. We’ll learn more as we see what happens over the next month of what the risk of those activities is.
Q. Arizona’s governor has linked the increase in COVID-19 cases to increased testing. Does he have a point?
A. It’s true that testing and cases are correlated. But in places, including Arizona, where you also see rising hospitalizations and a high or rising percent of tests that come back positive, those are signs of trouble. And that is not just attributable to testing.
Q. As a public health official, what message do you have for places that didn’t take the virus too seriously?
A. It’s not too late to put in place the stringent public health practices that I know are really hard for people and for the economy and for political leaders to pursue. But it’s not too late to do the diagnostic testing, the contact tracing and isolation. That option is still open to us.
Q. What can we learn from other countries?
A. South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, Iceland, Australia and Germany have used these practices to control their outbreaks. And now they have a lot more freedom to do things in the community, to see their elderly relatives, to kind of regain some of their normal life. We don’t really have that option now.
Q. Are we at risk of seeing a neverending series of spikes in locations around the country?
A. I do believe that we will continue to have to manage this virus until we have a vaccine. We’ll still have to spend a little bit more time at home, wear masks, hand hygiene, avoiding mass gatherings. Those are activities we’re going to have to pursue.
Q. How concerned are you, from a public health perspective, about this hodgepodge approach that we’re seeing from state to state?
A. There is room to improve on the leadership of the federal response in closing those gaps. But there is also, I think, room to continue to support state and local officials on the front lines.
Q. Does the disease spread more through aerosol transmission or larger droplets?
A. It seems like a majority of transmission is through droplets, and so that’s why we all wear the nonmedical fabric face masks to prevent those droplets that we produce when we’re speaking or singing or shouting from spreading around. But there will be some fraction of virus that is effectively aerosolized, and they kind of float around. That is not, though, the main route of transmission. The science on this is always evolving, and it’s a difficult thing to characterize, so that may change.
Q. Let’s talk about reopening schools. Can we be making that decision right now?
A. Communities will continue to have to reevaluate the burden of illness in their communities. They should be ready to be flexible and adaptable. In other countries that have reopened schools, sometimes that goes fine, and sometimes there is an outbreak that means they will reclose the schools. So we should all be prepared to be flexible and responsive to our local conditions.