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The United States risks a resurgence in cases if it lifts social distancing limits before summer, according to a new study. Photo: AFP
ChinaScience

Don’t relax social distancing in United States before summer, researchers warn

  • US risks a resurgence in the coronavirus if it eases restrictions sooner, according to new computer modelling
  • Without a safe vaccine, controlling Covid-19 rests on limiting contact, tracing and testing, team says
Coronavirus pandemic
Kinling Lo
Kinling Loin Beijing
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The United States needs to maintain strict social distancing measures until the summer to avoid setting off a deadly resurgence of the pandemic coronavirus, according to a study by two American researchers.

Using a computer model of transmission, the researchers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana concluded that the consequences of relaxing control measures in May were alarming and that social distancing should be kept at a high level until sometime in the summer.

“Strategies that maintain control at a high level until summer 2020 allow for tapering of control thereafter and minimal deaths, whereas strategies that relax control in the short term lead to fewer options for control later and a higher likelihood of exceeding hospital capacity,” the researchers said in a non-peer reviewed paper released on preprint service medRxiv.org.

“[Then the measures] can be relaxed to a small degree but will still need to be maintained at a relatively high level thereafter.”

The study was authored by Alex Perkins, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology and population biology, and Guido España, a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is under pressure to reopen businesses, schools and other public spaces to counter a slowing economy, soaring unemployment and anti-lockdown protests across the country, particularly as Trump seeks re-election in November.

The US has the most cases of Covid-19 – the disease caused by the coronavirus – with more than 830,000 confirmed cases and a death toll of mote than 58,000 as of Wednesday.

Federal social distancing guidelines were expected to end in late April but Trump has signalled that they could be extended until early in the summer or later.

“We’re going to have to see where it is,” Trump said on Thursday. “I think people are going to know just out of common sense. At some point, we won’t have to do that. But until we feel safe, we’re going to be extending.”

However, these guidelines are not binding and each state has its own rules that restrict various behaviours, such as working from home, eating out and socialising. More than a dozen states also reportedly have plans to reopen for business.

According to the University of Notre Dame study, only “a safe, effective, and widely used vaccine would obviate the need for social distancing” but this was not likely to be available until the spring at the earliest.

In the meantime, controlling Covid-19 would depend on the suite of non-pharmaceutical interventions, including not only some degree of social distancing, but also diagnostic testing, contact tracing, and case isolation, the researchers said.

Anthony Fauci, Trump’s leading infectious disease adviser, said last week that the US was “not there yet” in having enough testing capacity or contact tracing systems in place to allow for reopening the economy.

In a paper in the journal Science in mid-April, a team at the Harvard School of Public Health also warned that the virus would be back once restrictions were lifted.

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