Potential 2nd Wave of Coronavirus Could Strike During Fall and Winter

CDC Director Robert Redfield spoke on Tuesday, April 22, 2020, about the potential of a second wave of coronavirus striking and spreading in the fall and winter continuing into 2021. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said to The Washington Post. “We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time.” So far, COVID-19 has killed over 45,000 Americans and has caused more than 178,000 casualties around the world, according to data sourced from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has also foreshadowed the potential of a second wave of infection: “There is always the possibility as we get into next fall, and the beginning of early winter, that we could see a rebound,” Dr. Fauci said to CNN last week. When talking about antibody tests, Dr. Fauci claimed they won’t be meaningful until more is known about the virus, saying it is “a reasonable assumption that when you have an antibody that you are protected against reinfection. But that has not been proven for this particular virus… We don’t know how long that protection – if it exists – lasts. Is it one month? Three months? Six months? A year?”

Redfield tried to highlight the fortunate circumstance that the coronavirus did not arrive earlier in the U.S. because if the peak from COVID-19 coincided with the peak in seasonal flu cases, “it could have been really, really, really, really difficult in terms of health capacity.” Redfield has acknowledged that social distancing has had an enormous impact on slowing down the spread of the virus. In regard to protests against stay-at-home orders and calls by President Trump to “liberate” states, Redfield said, “It’s not helpful.“