Will states reopening now see coronavirus cases spike? ‘It takes time,’ experts say

Despite reports of spikes in coronavirus cases as some states start to reopen, the actual effect of loosening stay-home orders will take weeks to show up, CNN reports.

More than half the states have relaxed restrictions, despite some not meeting White House standards to do so, according to the network. But the impact won’t be immediate.

“It will be at least two to three weeks before we see an increase in the number of infections because it takes time for individuals to infect others and for them to display symptoms,” said data scientist Youyang Gu, CNN reported.

Symptoms of the coronavirus don’t appear for 2 to 14 days after exposure, and some people may never develop symptoms, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

“After displaying symptoms, it will still take a few days for the symptoms to worsen enough for the person to get tested,” Gu said, CNN reported. “The test results can take a few days to get reported. At each stage, there’s a lag time.”

Coronavirus deaths may take even longer to show up, since three weeks between infection and death seems to be the average, Gu said, though patients on ventilators can linger much longer.

States including Tennessee, Florida and Texas reported one-day jumps in coronavirus cases and deaths as they began to reopen last week, The Hill reported.

In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves rolled back some reopening plans after a surge in coronavirus cases confirmed Friday, Forbes reported.

But it’s simply too early for those spikes to be a direct result of changes in lockdown rules, CNN reported.

An internal White House document obtained by The New York Times projects the United States will see 200,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths each day by June 1, according to the publication.

Those are increases from current figures of 25,000 cases and 1,750 deaths per day, The New York Times reported. The projections are based on Federal Emergency Management Agency models.

But the White House said the new projections had not been reviewed by the administration, according to the publication.

And Johns Hopkins University, which provided some of the data used in the model, said they were preliminary analyses of possible scenarios including the premature relaxation of social distancing rules, according to Fox News.

Separately, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington has doubled its earlier U.S. death toll estimate cited by the White House to project nearly 135,000 deaths by August.

President Donald Trump, who on Sunday said U.S. deaths could exceed 100,000, said Tuesday the estimate assumed no steps were being taken to reduce numbers of coronavirus cases, Fox News reported. But that turns out to be incorrect.

The estimate actually assumes states will keep their existing social-distancing policies, FactCheck reports.

The U.S. death toll passed 70,000 on Tuesday, based on data from Johns Hopkins University .

More than 3.6 million cases of the COVID-19 virus have been confirmed worldwide with more than 258,000 deaths as of May 6, according to the university. The United States has more than 1.1 million confirmed cases and more than 71,000 deaths.

The World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global pandemic. In the United States, Trump has declared a national emergency.

This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Will states reopening now see coronavirus cases spike? ‘It takes time,’ experts say."