technologyreview | The large number of people already infected with the coronavirus in
the US has begun to act as a brake on the spread of the disease in
hard-hit states.
Millions of US residents have been infected by
the virus that causes covid-19, and at least 160,000 are dead. One
effect is that the pool of susceptible individuals has been depleted in
many areas. After infection, it’s believed, people become immune (at
least for months), so they don’t transmit the virus to others. This
slows the pandemic down.
“I believe the substantial epidemics
in Arizona, Florida and Texas will leave enough immunity to assist in
keeping COVID-19 controlled,” Trevor Bedford, a pandemic analyst at the
University of Washington, said on Friday, in a series of tweets. “However, this level of immunity is not compatible with a full return to societal behavior as existed before the pandemic.”
The
exact extent to which acquired immunity is slowing the rate of
transmission is unknown, but major questions like school reopening and
air travel may eventually hinge on the answer.
What is known is
that after rising at an alarming pace starting in May, new cases of
covid-19 in Sun Belt states like Florida have started to fall. Some of
that may be due to social distancing behavior, but rising rates of
immunity are also a factor, according to Youyang Gu, a computer
scientist whose Covid-19 Projections is among 34 pandemic models tracked
by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Immunity
may play a significant part in the regions that are declining,” says
Gu. At least until the fall, which is how far his models look forward,
he says, “I don’t think there is going to be another spike” of
infections in southern states.
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