ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — As China battles a coronavirus cluster, experts in the area warn the same could happen here.
"We must take heed, otherwise we're fools," said Dr. Jay Wolfson, a public health doctor at USF.
Once again, China's course of the coronavirus may be an indicator of what's to come in the U.S. says Wolfson, "We're all at risk of something happening as it just happened again in Northeast China. And we don't need to shut down the whole state again when that happens."
China's new cases have resulted in new lockdowns, but they are targeted.
"They knew exactly where they were, they focused in on that location like a laser beam, and they were able to close off a large enough area around there to secure it completely to make sure it doesn't leak out again," said Wolfson. "Because that's what it does very, very effectively."
A targeted approach will most likely be necessary in the U.S. come this Fall.
"This is evidence that this thing can re-erupt. And we know that viruses do that," said Wolfson.
Greater testing and the ability to contact trace with great specificity is the key to prevent a sweeping shutdown.
"So unless you have the testing capacity, the surveillance capacity, the mitigation capacity, and the ability to close things down quickly, you run the risk of having it spread again."
Seeing clusters of cases is not new to our area, however.
"Those examples that we've seen early on are nursing homes," said Dr. David Wein, the chief of emergency medicine at Tampa General Hospital. "You know areas where there are lots of people living in close quarters."
And, we will likely see come a second wave of clusters, come the Fall. Before then, doctors urge more testing to create better community maps of coronavirus. "We cannot afford to wait between then and now. To test, manage, and have baseline information," said Wolfson.
That way, when clusters do pop up, there can be a localized approach to stopping the spread.
"So we have to find some way of how we are going to balance and live with the virus, and still protect people," said Wein. "Because I don't know that we can live in complete social isolation for the next year or two or longer."
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