Another Coronavirus Lockdown May Be On The Horizon, Centers For Disease Control Warns

Bruce Haring
Updated ·2 min read

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that another lockdown is possible if coronavirus cases continue to spike

CDC Deputy Director Jay Butler made the dire warning in a press briefing, the agency’s first in three months since the pandemic began. .

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“If cases begin to go up again, particularly if they go up dramatically, it’s important to recognize that more mitigation efforts such as what were implemented back in March may be needed again,” Butler said. He added that any implementation would be made on a local level.

Warning signs of such a spike are already out there. In Los Angeles, County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer revealed the number of cases identified in Los Angeles County over the past 24 hours was again sky-high.

There were 1633 new cases in the county as of Friday, according to the health department. That’s the third-highest one day total since the outbreak began, according the L.A. county coronavirus dashboard. Ferrer said that Friday’s number included 500 delayed cases from one lab.

Lab delays have occurred nearly every week during the pandemic. Adding delayed numbers into the daily total has been commonplace for the county health department which means that, while not all days have delayed numbers, enough do for these record highs to seem significant.

Also reporting spikes in cases are Texas, Florida and Arizona. President Donald Trump has said another shutdown won’t happen, and businesses are just in the beginning stages of reopening. But many businesses and people are not practicing social distancing recommendations and other safeguards, leading some experts to warn that a renewed surge could reach dangerous levels.

“Right now, communities are experiencing different levels of transmission occurring, as they gradually ease up onto the community mitigation efforts and gradually reopen,” said Butler.

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