BOSTON (WHDH) - With businesses in the Bay State beginning to reopen, public health experts say this is no time to relax efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus.
“Just because we’re seeing improvement doesn’t mean the threat has gone away.”
Dr. Paul Biddinger from Harvard School of Public Health said he, like everyone else, is ready for life to get back to normal. But, until a vaccine has been developed and is widely distributed there is always going to be the threat of another wave.
“People sometimes think about waves like snowstorms. Like, once the storm has passed you can kind of go outside and play for a while until the next one comes back, and that’s really not the way that pandemics work. The virus is still out there,” Biddinger said, “and it’s still snowing.”
According to him, a second wave could come in the fall should students start returning to school and the public begins traveling at a normal rate.
“It could happen sooner if we reopen to fast. People start interacting with one another without masks, without appropriate distance, in too significant numbers,” he said.
Even if residents and officials do everything right, New Englanders are still vulnerable.
“The risk of travel shows how interconnected we are,” Biddinger said. “So, I think definitely, if there are increasing numbers in other states and there are a number of other states in the United States that actually have increasing numbers right now, that could potentially affect us here in New England, no question.”
Biddinger said if there is a second wave, his hope is that it will be a small wave and that the Commonwealth will use the knowledge about face masks and social distancing that they have learned already.
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