Study: US Must Live Social Distancing By 2022

Empire State Building di New York (Cahty Williams/Unsplash)

JAKARTA - When the President of the United States (US) Donald Trump decided to open economic activity immediately, a study shows that it cannot be done immediately. According to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, the US needs to take social distancing measures during the COVID-19 outbreak until 2022.

The study was issued on Tuesday April 14, when that day saw 2,200 people who died from COVID-19. Sadly, when the total number of deaths in the US stands at more than 28,000, the country is still debating how to reopen its economy.

"Intermittent distances may be needed until 2022 unless critical care capacity increases substantially or a treatment or vaccine becomes available," the Harvard researchers said in findings published Tuesday, April 14, 2020.

Citing the example of South Korea (South Korea) and Singapore, the researchers write that effective distance can reduce stress on the health care system and allow contact tracing and quarantine to be more effective.

This study admits that taking social distancing too far is likely to have very negative economic, social and educational consequences. In addition, if the social distancing rule is only carried out occasionally, it will only tire the health care system due to a single, prolonged epidemic.

The study adds that surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus remains to be maintained as a re-emergence of the virus is possible until 2024. The findings directly contradict research heralded by the US Government showing the pandemic can stop. this summer.

"If intermittent distance is the preferred approach, it may be necessary to do it for several years, which is obviously a very long time," said Dr. Marc Lipsitch, study author and professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public in an interview.

Another important factor is whether people become immune to the new coronavirus after they are infected. This is not yet known. The potential challenges of this pandemic include finding reliable tests to determine who has antibodies to the coronavirus, determining the level of immunity conferred by previous infections, and how long that immunity lasts.

The study teams hope their research will help identify possible epidemic pathways with alternative approaches, identify complementary ways to fight them, and spur further thinking about ways to contain the pandemic. Often heralded social distancing is 'one of the most powerful weapons' against COVID-19, said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"If we can maximize social distancing, we can limit the ability of this virus," he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the peak of COVID-19 is still uncertain. Nearly two million people worldwide have been infected and more than 124,000 have died in the most serious pandemic in a century. The epicenter has shifted from China, where the virus emerged in December 2019, to the US, which has now recorded the most deaths in the world.