Coronavirus outbreaks may continue into 2022, Harvard experts say
- Social distancing measures may be needed for two more years to prevent infections from rebounding and overwhelming hospitals
- Resurgence in contagion could be possible ‘as late as 2024’, researchers say
Coronavirus infections will rebound and threaten to overwhelm hospitals when current social distancing measures are lifted, so prolonged or periodic restrictions may be needed for two more years, according to mathematical modelling by Harvard University’s Chan School of Public Health.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Science, comes as the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, and Rhode Island are conferring on when and how to safely lift stay-home orders and reopen their states’ economies.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has cited a University of Washington model that predicts the US outbreak will taper off at the end of May, enabling a return to normalcy.
“Even in the event of apparent elimination,” the Harvard researchers wrote, coronavirus “surveillance should be maintained, since a resurgence in contagion could be possible as late as 2024”.
Senior author Marc Lipsitch added during a Tuesday teleconference: “Predicting an end to the pandemic in the summer … is not consistent with what we know.”
Lipsitch and his co-authors stressed that no one knows the answers to vitally important questions about natural protection: are people who recover from Covid-19 fully immune to the virus, and for how long?
