Coronavirus

that COVID-19 can be a real threat and warrants community concern.

As of this moment, areas of extensive community spread (“hotspots”) are limited to a few regions of the country — Westchester County in New York state being one and adjacent to our border. But because people can move readily throughout the country, it is possible that we will be in contact with people that are asymptomatic carriers or have mild disease. From current evidence, it appears that household contacts are the highest risk for transmission. How do we prevent community spread? That’s right, social distancing. While not a silver bullet, there’s good reason to believe that it will help to slow the spread by breaking chains of contact, thus saving crucial health resources and potentially saving lives.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 will increase as virus testing in the United States ramps up over the coming days. But this shouldn’t be a cause for mass concern. Increased testing to rapidly identify cases that are already in our communities and does not necessarily signify an accelerating spread.

As testing increases throughout the world, we will have a better idea of how the disease spreads, how symptoms manifest in different populations and how we can protect ourselves. We currently have testing capacity that is less than 10% of the capacity of South Korea (on a comparable population basis); once this increases (and it likely will), we will find many more cases and will find many more “hotspot” communities where more aggressive community response is necessary to slow the spread.

Until then, experts recommend remaining calm, keeping up to date on the daily facts and figures, and taking precautions to prevent spread throughout our communities. Public health crises are just that: public. This isn’t just about you. It’s about all of us. Nobody is expecting you to be perfect. But if everyone makes a diligent effort at changing their typical behavior, the impact will be great.