Things may be getting somewhat better. For the past week, new case numbers have been growing steadily, rather than exponentially and daily new deaths are lower this week than last week. A body of preliminary research suggests that social distancing and lockdowns have worked to flatten the curve and, at a minimum, greatly slowed down the spread of the disease. Social distancing is proving to work to slow the spread of the coronavirus. In the states that started social distancing the earliest, including Seattle and San Francisco, the growth of new cases has slowed noticeably but there are still things we don’t know.
“Ideally, case numbers would now start falling. If the effective reproductive number (the R0) of the virus has been pushed below 1 with the shelter-in-place orders around the country, then every day should see fewer infections than the day before, and case numbers should fall, hopefully as quickly as they rose.”
Dr. Becca Bartles, executive director of infection prevention, notes that “we are still moving in a uphill direction” when speaking to the uncertainty of what’s next.
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