The coronavirus that originated from Wuhan has claimed the lives of more than one lakh people in the United States, and the current trend indicates that India is also emerging as a hotbed of this deadly pandemic outbreak.
Even though coronavirus positive cases and mortality rates are rising drastically in heavily populated countries, governments are planning to ease down the lockdown restrictions, so that people will start living in a 'new normal' where masks are going to be the new-age condoms.
Coronavirus in the early stages
As panic looms up, Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has revealed that the real chaos associated with coronavirus outbreak is yet to unfold. According to Jha, coronavirus has now shown its killing spree in urban areas, and it will soon move into the suburbs and into the rural areas.
Jha made these remarks while talking exclusively with NPR, and he made it clear that the rise of coronavirus cases in the United States will continue in the coming weeks too as the pandemic will start showing up in rural regions.
"The nature of this pandemic is that it starts and kind of accelerates in big cities, but then it moves out into the suburbs and into the rural areas. So, by the time we're done with this, I think every American will have felt it much more up close and personal. That's what I worry about — that it shouldn't have to take that for people to really understand how tragic this is and how calamitous in many ways this is," Jha told NPR.
Jha revealed that the pace of coronavirus spread may likely go down in the coming days, but the number of cases in the United States will continue increasing, causing more deaths in the country.
"While the pace will slow down because we are doing some amount of social distancing and testing is ramping up — we're going to, unfortunately, see a lot more sickness and, unfortunately, a lot more deaths in the upcoming months," added Jha.
Coronavirus mutation fears continue
Despite strong measures to contain coronavirus, a section of medical experts are actually worried about the mutation which the pandemic has undergone over this period. A recent study claimed that coronavirus has already mutated to more than 30 different strains.
This study conducted by researchers at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou revealed that the healthcare sector has actually underestimated the mutation capabilities of this deadly pathogen. They also added that finding an overall cure for coronavirus could be difficult, as different strains of this pathogen have affected people in various parts of the world.
