Coronavirus won’t slow in US until 60% have had it, expert says. Where are we now?
A University of Minnesota health expert says the United States may be a long way from seeing the end of the coronavirus pandemic, Fox News reports.
“What we have to understand is that about 5% of the U.S. population has been infected to date with this virus — some locations slightly higher,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, according to the network.
“This virus is not going to rest until it gets to about 60 or 70%,” Osterholm said in a Sunday interview. “So one way or another we’re going to see a lot of additional cases out there.”
Osterholm sounded a similar warning to USA Today in May.
“This damn virus is going to keep going until it infects everybody it possibly can,” he said, according to the publication. “It surely won’t slow down until it hits 60% to 70%.”
At that point, the United States will reach herd immunity, halting the spread of the virus, Osterholm said, reported USA Today.
Basically, herd immunity means that enough people are resistant to a virus from having already caught it that few new people are infected, McClatchy New previously reported.
But some health experts caution that herd immunity isn’t going to be a solution to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Herd immunity without a vaccine is by definition not a preventative measure,” says Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an Australian epidemiologist, in a ScienceAlert opinion column.
“If 70 percent of your population is infected with a disease, it is by definition not prevention,” Meyerowitz-Katz wrote. “How can it be? Most of the people in your country are sick!”
Regardless, other leading health experts have warned in recent days that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over.
“I would hope to get to some degree of real normality within a year or so,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, The Telegraph reports. “But I don’t think it’s this winter or fall, we’ll be seeing it for a bit more.”
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says the virus “could go on for a couple of cycles, coming back and forth” in the U.S., according to the publication.
The World Health Organization also sounded the alarm about a potential coronavirus resurgence , McClatchy News previously reported.
“More than six months into this pandemic, this is not the time for any country to take its foot off the pedal,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO.
He described the global coronavirus outlook as “worsening” as new cases rose.
More than 7.9 million cases of the COVID-19 virus have been confirmed worldwide with more than 434,000 deaths as of Monday, June 15, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has more than 2 million confirmed cases and more than 115,000 deaths.
WHO has declared coronavirus a global pandemic. In the United States, President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency.
This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 9:04 AM with the headline "Coronavirus won’t slow in US until 60% have had it, expert says. Where are we now?."