Coronavirus distancing may need to continue until 2022: experts

Physical distancing measures may need to be in place intermittently until 2022, scientists from Harvard have warned in an analysis that suggests there could be resurgences of Covid-19 for years to come.

The paper, published in the journal Science, concludes that a one-time lockdown will not be sufficient to bring the pandemic under control and that secondary peaks could be larger than the current one without continued restrictions.

One scenario predicted a resurgence could occur as far in the future as 2025 in the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment.

“Infections spread when there are two things: infected people and susceptible people. Unless there is some enormously larger amount of herd immunity than we’re aware of … the majority of the population is still susceptible. Predicting the end of the pandemic in the summer [of 2020] is not consistent with what we know about the spread of infections,” Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard and co-author of the study, said.

(Gazeta.pl)