Reopening states in US could lead to deadlier situations, based on latest coronavirus models. Contact reduction would determine the death toll, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Seven coronavirus models suggest that deaths from coronavirus in the US will keep rising in the coming weeks. CDC points out that the "contact reduction" Americans practice could be the basis of how sharply the death toll rises.
The coronavirus models can predict the tally of cases and deaths on the state and national levels. A model from the University of Texas at Austin produces metro-area projections.
"State-level forecasts vary widely, reflecting differences in early epidemic phases, timing of interventions, and model-specific assumptions," the CDC says.
Models that take into account strong contact reduction show that new deaths will still happen. But it will "slow substantially over the next four weeks," the CDC said.
"Conversely, models that do not incorporate as strong contact reductions ... suggest that total deaths may continue to rise quickly."
Increased death toll projection
A model, which the White House coronavirus task force often mentions, has increased its projection of the death toll again. The model sees 74,000 Americans losing their lives to the virus by August.
The projection changed due to longer peaks in some states. There are also signs that people are moving again, according to Dr. Chris Murray, director of the University of Washington's Institute for Help Metrics and Evaluation.
Last week, the model predicted 67,641 deaths from COVID-19.
Several states began reopening, such as Georgia, Michigan, Hawaii, Texas, and Alaska.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom said his state will still not change its stay-at-home order. However, crowds have already flocked beaches in the southern part of the state.
The coronavirus already infected more than 988,400 people in the US and killed more than 56,200.
"It's a safer strategy to get the number of infections in the community down to a really low level, and then testing and contact tracing and isolation can work," Murray said Monday.
Reopening businesses
Georgia began to allow small businesses to resume operations on Friday. Governor Brian Kemp said the state is "moving forward with data and information and decisions from the local public health officials, meeting and working within the guidelines of the great plan that the President has laid out."
However, based on Trump's reopening proposal, Georgia does not meet the "gating" criteria.
According to "Opening Up America Again," states should not start to reopen until they exhibit a downward trajectory of documented cases in a 14-day period. They can also reopen if they have a downward trajectory of positive tests as a percent of total tests in a 14-day period.
"We didn't meet the full gating criteria, but we met several of them and we were approaching a plateauing, which made us feel that it would be safe to move forward because we had three things in place," said Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health.
She added that such criteria were testing capacity, adequate hospitalization, and an increasing contact tracing capacity.
Experts stress that there is still a lot that researchers do not know yet about the accuracy of the tests. The World Health Organization warned that there is no existing data yet that antibodies can prevent a second wave of infection.
