The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that people shouldn’t expect the coronavirus pandemic to end this summer, saying that the virus is still spreading too quickly and widely to be contained.
"This is really the beginning, and what we hope is that we can take it seriously and slow the transmission,” said CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat in a live interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association on Monday, adding that she expects "this virus to continue to circulate."
Arizona, Texas and New Jersey have all backtracked on plans to reopen businesses in their states after a recent spike in coronavirus cases. Schuchat said on Monday that "We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging.”
She added that there had been "a lot of wishful thinking around the country" that the crisis would end by the time summer arrived.
"We are not even beginning to be over this," Schuchat said. "There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so."
She continued, "We're not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea, where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control."