The coronavirus pandemic may last over 18 months, according to a 100-page federal government response plan lately shared with The New York Times.
The next year and a half could include "multiple waves of disease" in regards to the document. "The advance and harshness of COVID-19 will be difficult to predict and determine."
Furthermore, augmenting COVID-19 cases in the U.S. will lead to more hospitalizations among high-risk people, which could stress to its limit the health care system, they claimed. The report, dated March 13, is indicated as "unclassified" but "for Official Use Only," and "Not For Public Distribution or Release."
In the paper, officials examine responses that the government could take in response to the epidemic, including measures already taken such as shutting down schools and conjuring the Defense Production Act of 1950, a law dating back to the Korean War which enables action to obligate industry to enhance the production of essential equipment and supplies.
On Wednesday (March 18), President Donald Trump declared he was invoking the Defense Production Act, and two days later said he had put it into effect, in accordance with Washington Post.
The strategy also predicts that product deficiencies will happen "impacting health care, emergency services, and other aspects of crucial infrastructure." Besides, state and local governments, critical infrastructure, and communication channels "will be afflicted and possibly unreliable," the plan read.
Another document broadcasted on Monday (March 16) by the Imperial College of London presented another gloom prognosis that urged both the U.K. and the U.S. into action: Uncontrollable transmission of the virus could lead up to 510,000 deaths in Britain and up to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S., as stated by The New York Times.
"While our awareness of contagious illnesses and their prevention, today, can't be compared with the one in 1918 [the year an H1N1 influenza called "The Spanish Flu" caused a global pandemic], the vast majority of the countries around the world confront the same challenge with COVID-19, a virus with the corresponding fatality to H1N1 influenza in 1918," they indicated. In order to fight the ongoing pandemic, the paper concentrates on two major plans of action: "suppression," in which measures are taken to reduce the spread of the virus, and "mitigation," where the final spread is not eliminated but slowed down.
Their conclusions advised that population-wide social distancing would have the biggest impact, and combined with other measures, like home isolation of people who have coronavirus and school closures, has the potential to reduce spread rapidly, they claimed.
"To avoid a pick up in transmission, these actions should continue until large stocks of vaccine are available to immunize the population," which could be 18 months or more, according to the Imperial College of London report.
COMMENTS