When Will Coronavirus Social Distancing End? Experts Say to Brace for a New “Normal”
By now, a majority of the United States has been practicing social distancing for about a month due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. It’s working—we’re starting to flatten the curve through massive public action—but social distancing is also leaving people feeling frustrated, anxious, and lonely.
It’s natural to wonder when life will start to resemble “normal” again, but no one is able to accurately predict when the current social distancing measures can be safely lifted, or, for that matter, when the COVID-19 crisis will be over. While individual states are starting to coordinate with one another on what the next few months of gradually reopening the economy could look like, there are just too many variables to predict the end with any degree of certainty.
Infectious disease experts do know, however, what the conditions at the tail end of social distancing will look like. Here, doctors explain what needs to happen before we rush back into society as we knew it.
Watch for a peak in infections.
First, the rate of infection needs to slow way down before we can safely reel back on social distancing guidelines, says Joseph Khabbaza, M.D., a critical care specialist at Cleveland Clinic. “You have to reach your peak number of cases,” Dr. Khabbaza explains. “That’s going to be the most important point.” He stresses that each state will work on its own timeline, as regulations evolve and the number of new infections ebbs and flows by region.
In New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak, Governor Andrew Cuomo says “the curve continues to flatten.” And, according to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, America might be closer to its nationwide peak than previously assumed.
“The models do show that we are very close to the peak,” Hahn said in an interview with ABC. “This has been a really fast-moving outbreak, so we really have to take this day by day.”
Once individual regions do hit a peak, the number of new cases has to consistently decline for a week or two. “That’s going to be the sign for the public health officials to start loosening things up a little bit,” Dr. Khabbaza says.
Then, expect social distancing measures to come and go.
Sheltering at home is one of the most aggressive forms of social distancing, but it’s not the only measure that states can use to curb the spread of COVID-19. Day-to-day life won’t instantly return back to normal the moment stay-at-home orders are lifted—that will be an ongoing process.
In fact, a new study from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health reports that “social distancing measures could be fully relaxed by early- to mid- 2021,” depending on smaller outbreaks that follow. However, the researchers project that social distancing could last until 2022, requiring measures to be in place between 25% and 75% of that time, depending on the seasons, “unless critical care capacity is increased substantially or a treatment or vaccine becomes available.”
“Sheltering at home would be one of the things that I think would go first, as we once again begin to open up businesses, activities, universities, and the like,” says William Schaffner, M.D., medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “But I would expect social distancing—the recommendation to take some care to be separate from each other—may actually go on a bit longer as we make this transition.”
That’s because there are some risks in opening everything too soon, Dr. Khabbaza says. “The odds are that at least for the next year, and possibly for much longer, there are going to be waves where social distancing may need to be implemented in shorter durations, if you start seeing an uptick in new cases after [safety measures] are loosened.”
So in the next few months, you might be able to shop at a clothing store, visit a coffee shop, or eat at a restaurant—as long as you maintain at least six feet of distance from others. It’s likely that the last activities allowed to resume will be large mass gatherings: athletic events, concerts, religious services, political rallies, and the like.
Dr. Schaffner notes that summer will likely see a drop in new cases, but that winter could bring new waves of COVID-19. “Most of us expect that there will be some sort of resurgence as we get back to the winter, along with influenza,” he says. “It will be interesting to see if the CDC, in its annual recommendations, reactivates this social distancing.”
Understand that “normal” will feel different until we have a vaccine.
Already, leaders are looking to the next stage of this pandemic—a cautious return to public life. In Wuhan, China, where the novel coronavirus oubreak originated, citizens are now allowed to travel; in Denmark, elementary schools and day cares have reopened; in Vienna, Austria thousands of shops opened their doors for the first time in weeks.
America is starting to look forward to reopening, too, but life probably won’t be exactly like it was before. California Governor Gavin Newsom this week presented tentative plans for lifting stay-at-home orders, and he explained that restaurants could look strikingly different at first: temperature checks at the door, half-capacity seating, single-use menus, staffs in masks and gloves.
Widespread antibody testing is perhaps our greatest tool for understanding how long social distancing measures will have to last—at least, until we have a viable vaccine. “If we can identify all these asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic people that turned out to have had the disease, but were not high-risk enough to get testing, that’s going to give us a really good idea of how susceptible the general population is,” Dr. Khabbaza says. “If we find that most people have immunity, that’s going to play a big role in how much social distancing is needed in the future.”
In all likelihood, even when the country reopens, everyone will have to keep their distance. Although shelter-in-place orders might be lifted, you’ll probably still see people in masks, restaurants at half capacity, and work-from-home policies for months to come. Life will be recognizable, but it won’t be normal. Instead, it might become the new normal—a post-COVID-19 society, populated by people newly aware of their vulnerabilities.
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