Some countries are getting down to zero cases of the coronavirus without a vaccine. Could we see that in the D.C. area?
“In Europe, when it went away, it really went away. In countries you saw numbers go way down and we’re seeing much lower numbers, say, in New York City now,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
He said that countries that have been able to get to 30 cases per million per day have been able to open schools successfully.
“If we can get to lower levels, we are going to be able to do more things safely,” he said.
New Zealand has on Saturday marked 100 days since its last case.
Sharfstein said that we’re not close to zero yet in the D.C. area, but it is possible for the count of coronavirus cases to go down without a vaccine.
“We’re not going to get to zero, but it is realistic to expect that we can get lower,” Sharfstein said.
WTOP’s Michelle Murillo contributed to this report.
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