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Infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja spoke with co-host Eric Shawn on “America’s News HQ” where he discussed how the coronavirus may impact smaller communities outside the currently infected areas of the U.S.
“We’re going to see cases in every city and every location around the country. This is a community-spreading respiratory virus and it’s going to reach all the corners of this country,” Adalja said Saturday. “That being said, it doesn’t mean that every city is going to have a New York City-style outbreak.”
“We’re going to see this kind of cascade across the country at a stuttered approach with certain kinds of cities having a peak there and other cities having to go, getting over their peak.”
“So it’s going to not be simultaneous,” Adalja explained. “So you may be spared in the first part of this wave of maybe later on you may get more, more cases. And it’s important that you prepare in that time. And you set up processes to be able to detect these cases, isolate them and prepare your hospitals while you have time in some of the smaller cities.”
President Trump on Saturday night said his administration would not be issuing a quarantine on New York, parts of New Jersey and some of Connecticut as part of the efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“A quarantine will not be necessary,” he tweeted, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would issue a “travel advisory” later in the evening.
The senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security urged smaller communities to prepare for another wave of the coronavirus.
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“If you don’t have a lot of cases now, now is the time to prepare,” Adalja added. “We don’t want to waste time in. The more prepared you are, the less of a hit this will be when it comes to your community.”
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
