{"id":13776,"date":"2020-05-04T18:26:39","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T22:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/?p=13776"},"modified":"2020-05-18T12:55:33","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T16:55:33","slug":"as-lockdowns-lift-second-wave-concerns-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/as-lockdowns-lift-second-wave-concerns-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"As lockdowns lift, &#8216;second wave&#8217; concerns grow"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>PARIS, FRANCE &#8212;<br \/>\n\tAs several nations begin relaxing their lockdowns following an initial peak in COVID-19 cases, attention is turning to how they can avoid a &#8220;second wave&#8221; of infections as social distancing is eased.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tItaly and Spain &#8212; two of the hardest-hit countries &#8212; have already started allowing people outside to exercise for the first time in nearly two months, and several U.S. states are allowing businesses to reopen.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn France, where confinement measures are set to lift on May 11, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said there is a &#8220;fine line&#8221; between lifting restrictions on movement and avoiding a new surge in infections of a disease that has killed nearly a quarter of a million people globally.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8220;The risk of a second wave &#8212; which would hit our already fragile hospitals, which would need us to reimpose confinement and waste the efforts and sacrifices we&#8217;ve already made &#8212; is serious,&#8221; he said last week.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/newsletters\/the-covid19-brief-newsletter-signup\">Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n\tSocial distancing has proved effective in flattening the curve of new COVID-19 cases, buying health systems crucial time to recover and regroup. But it has also meant that a very small percentage of populations are likely to have been infected and thus developed immunity.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tFrance&#8217;s Pasteur Institute estimates that only around six per cent of the country&#8217;s population will have been infected by May 11.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tEven in virus hotspots in France, it is thought that no more than 25 per cent of people caught COVID-19 during the pandemic&#8217;s first wave.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis means that without a viable vaccine, experts say it is impossible to imagine life returning to normal any time soon.<\/p>\n<h3>\n\tWAITING GAME<\/h3>\n<p>\n\t&#8220;It will take several weeks or even several months to see the virus circulating again&#8221; at a high level, virologist Anne Goffard told France Inter radio.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tA second wave of infections was likely, she said, &#8220;at the earliest at the end of August&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBut while experts are more or less united on the probability of a new spike in cases as lockdowns are eased, there is debate over how the second wave will compare with the first.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSome senior health officials &#8212; notably in Germany and the U.S. &#8212; have warned it could bring even more infections than the March\/April peak. Others are more optimistic that changes in personal behaviour could slow new cases.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tPierachille Santus, a lung expert based in Milan, said the second wave &#8220;will probably be smaller than the first&#8221; thanks to control measures.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt is not yet known how or if the novel coronavirus will respond to warmer weather. Other viruses tend to go dormant during summer months.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8220;There&#8217;s probably a link (between the virus) and heat and humidity,&#8221; Jean-Francois Delfraissy, president of France&#8217;s science council, said Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&#8220;We&#8217;re expecting a fairly peaceful summer,&#8221; he said, warning however that the virus could return forcefully towards the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tEven if businesses can reopen and people return to the streets, there are several ways of slowing the virus spread.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThese include keeping your distance from others, avoiding touching your face, washing your hands, wearing a mask while in public &#8212; all habits people have, to some extent, picked up during the first wave.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOne model run by the Public Health Expertise research group showed that such measures could reduce expected total COVID-19 deaths to 85,000 in France, compared with an anticipated 200,000 with no social distance or mask wearing.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tYet even in the best case scenario of new infections, hospitals are likely to be inundated with fresh patients.<\/p>\n<h3>\n\t&#8216;MINI-WAVES&#8217;<\/h3>\n<p>\n\tOther vital measures after lockdowns end are testing and contact-tracing &#8212; seeking out those new infections and isolating people they have been in close contact with.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWere countries able to ramp up their testing and tracing capacity, &#8220;we could have a series of mini-waves,&#8221; according to Didier Pitter, head of infection control and prevention at Geneva University Hospitals.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tGovernments will seek to limit the transmissions rate of COVID-19 (R0) to below one: that is, each infected person infects fewer than one other on average.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tA study published last month in The Lancet showed that testing, contact tracing and isolating confirmed infections reduced R0 in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to 0.4.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis helped the city avoid an outbreak such as the one that hit Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/health\/coronavirus\/as-lockdowns-lift-second-wave-concerns-grow-1.4923762\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PARIS, FRANCE &#8212; As several nations begin relaxing their lockdowns following an initial peak in COVID-19 cases, attention is turning to how they can avoid a &#8220;second wave&#8221; of infections as social distancing is eased. Italy and Spain &#8212; two of the hardest-hit countries &#8212; have already started allowing people outside to exercise for the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[120,162,161,157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15685,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776\/revisions\/15685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}