The true impact of allowing the first wave of Massachusetts businesses to reopen may not be clear until at least two weeks, and as many as four weeks, after they get the green to resume operations.
Doctors are keeping an eye on the reopening process as people prepare to leave their homes and re-enter the workplace with the expectation that they will have to wear masks and stay six feet apart. Any potential spike in cases will likely take weeks to appear, said Dr. Richard Ellison, an epidemiologist at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester.
“We’re still going to have to watch very carefully because this will be a slow process,” he said. “If we begin to see a slow uptick in cases, that’s going to be a worrisome sign.”
When exactly phase one takes effect remains unclear. Gov. Charlie Baker extended the non-essential business closures until at least May 18, but he also set that date as the deadline for the newly formed reopening advisory board to release its report outlining the state’s plans for reopening.
Massachusetts has recorded 86,010 coronavirus cases since officials first became aware of the outbreak. As of Sunday, the virus had claimed a reported 5,797 lives in Massachusetts. While thousands of COVID-19 patients have landed in the hospital, a much larger portion of the population has experienced mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.
Massachusetts has performed 460,826 COVID-19 tests as of Sunday, covering a fraction of the 6.9 million people who live in the state. Of those tests, 374,816 came back negative, but it’s unclear how many false negatives there may have been.
Because universal testing is not available and some tests reportedly had false-negative results, public health officials do not truly know how many people have contracted COVID-19 — or how many people were spared. Nor do they know yet how long someone who survives the virus the first time can remain immune.
“That’s another coronavirus question that’s still being researched and debated," Baker told reporters Friday during his daily briefing at the Massachusetts State House. "It also doesn’t tell you that much about who’s going to get it. I worry, people get very binary about some of this stuff.”
One example Baker noted Friday is the idea of circulating an immunity card. He cautioned against relying on an immunity card when public health experts still know little about how long or how strong someone’s immunity is after surviving the coronavirus the first time.
“It’s not like 50 years of studying the flu where you can tell people with a certain degree of certainty where if you have it, you’re not going to get it again,” he said.
Those who contract the coronavirus typically do not show symptoms until five days after exposure, Ellison said. They may spend another five days battling symptoms before their condition worsens and they end up in the hospital.
Doctors have seen the coronavirus affect the human body in various ways, from causing pneumonia to major blood clots to the recently discovered syndrome in children. But they all take several days to manifest.
UMass Memorial Health Care and St. Vincent Hospital had a combined total of 238 patients admitted with the coronavirus on Thursday, 12 fewer than Wednesday. Of those patients, 94 are in the intensive care unit, four people fewer than Wednesday, city officials said.
The two hospital systems have recorded 201 deaths from coronavirus-related complications, eight more since Wednesday. The field hospital at the DCU Center had 10 patients on Thursday, the same number Wednesday.
Ellison said patients have suffered pulmonary embolisms, where a blood clot moves from another part of the body to the lungs, and have worn out dialysis filters twice as fast as normal.
“A number of other infectious diseases can affect multiple different parts of the body,” Ellison said, citing syphilis and tuberculosis as examples. “This one, though, has characteristics we’ve not seen before. The impact on changes in the blood clotting is something which is really surprising. It’s only been seen with a few other viruses, and nothing quite like this.”
Depending on when businesses resume operations and how well people follow safety guidelines, it could take at least weeks for doctors to see the true impact of a reopening during the coronavirus pandemic. Ellison projects the state will need at least four to five weeks to truly understand whether there is a rise in cases and, so, whether reopening businesses are the reason.
Continuing to wear face masks can play a crucial role in keeping community spread to a minimum as businesses reopen, Ellison said.
“There is much more information has come out abut wearing masks in the last couple of months,” he said. “By wearing a mask, we’re protecting everyone else around us. It helps protect you, but it also helps protect everyone else in your community.”
The rapid, even furtive nature of COVID-19′s community spread, as patients took days to develop symptoms, became clear when federal researchers found that the virus could have spread in Washington weeks earlier than expected.
In Wisconsin, at least 52 people who voted in the April 7 primary contracted COVID-19. However, those who tested positive reported others way they may have contracted the virus, so it is unclear how many could have been exposed at the polls, according to the Associated Press.
A handful of states are planning to reopen businesses in their state despite recording new coronavirus cases. Tennessee, which let its Safer At Home order expire April 30, recorded a record high of 1,156 new cases on May 1, but the state has recorded between 200 and 600 new cases on most days over the past two weeks, according to the state Department of Health.
On Thursday, Tennessee had 329 new cases, bringing the state’s total number of coronavirus cases to 16,999.
Massachusetts, which has been harder hit than most states, won’t see a fast reopening, Gov. Charlie Baker said. With more than 5,000 deaths, the state’s advisory board is drafting a four-phase reopening plan that will allow for a partial reopening of select businesses on the condition that they implement a series of workplace safety standards. Those standards include social distancing requirements and mask mandates in the workplace.
It is unclear how long the four-phase reopening could take, though Baker suggested the state could space each phase out four weeks apart like other states. However it rolls out, the plan will likely disappoint restaurant owners and retailers who are pushing for a swifter reopening.
“Obviously safety is of paramount concern with everything that’s going on. At the same time, you know, as restaurant owners strongly feel we need to make sure we can protect jobs and make sure we can find a way to have restaurants survive in the face of all this,” said Erik Hynes, who with his father runs Hynes Restaurant Group in the South Shore.
Dozens of restaurant owners in Massachusetts have said the industry should be trusted to reopen sooner than later as workers are trained in safe food handling. Hynes said if he would like to see his business open to 50% capacity, though grocery stores and pharmacies that are open to sell essential items are capped at 25% capacity. Hynes said he could see tying the reopening process to a metric such as hospitalizations.
Another concern has emerged as public health experts learn more about the coronavirus’ level of transmission indoors, where some buildings may have better air circulation than others.
A study published last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that airflow played a major role in community spread of COVID-19 indoors. The study analyzed the spread of the virus on Jan. 23 in a five-floor, air-conditioned restaurant in China, where a person with the coronavirus ate lunch with three other family members. Two weeks later, his three family members, three members of a second family and three members of a third family in the restaurant had tested positive for the coronavirus.
“We conclude that in this outbreak, droplet transmission was prompted by air-conditioned ventilation. The key factor for infection was the direction of the airflow,” the researchers wrote, recommending temperature-monitoring surveillance, increasing the distance between tables and improving ventilation indoors.
“If there’s not a lot of air turnover, bacteria and everything that can get into the air may sit there for several minutes,” Ellison said. “When you’re outdoors, any kind of breeze is going to spread, the amount of air turnover is very constant.”
Baker’s reopening plan comes with requirements for businesses to follow, including the rollout of safety worker guidelines. Those standards, combined with robust, targeted testing and contact tracing should help Massachusetts root out any possible community transmissions, Ellison said.
“I absolutely support what the governor is doing 100% in this regard,” Ellison said. “I think we have to open up very slowly, and very carefully. We can’t open up and a week later, say things are looking great, one week. We’re going to have to wait.”
“The impact of the change of social distancing is not really going to show up for four to five weeks, so we need to do this very cautiously.”
Related Content:
"impact" - Google News
May 18, 2020 at 05:03PM
https://ift.tt/2AwsSMb
Could coronavirus cases rise after Mass. reopening True impact will take weeks to assess, UMass epidemiologis - MassLive.com
"impact" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2RIFll8
https://ift.tt/3fk35XJ
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Could coronavirus cases rise after Mass. reopening True impact will take weeks to assess, UMass epidemiologis - MassLive.com"
Post a Comment