CDC chief warns 2nd Covid-19 wave may be worse, arriving with flu season

A second wave of the coronavirus is supposed to hit the U.S..S. next winter and will strike much harder than the first because it'd likely reach the beginning of influenza season, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Tuesday.

"There's a possibility that the attack of the virus on our nation next winter will be even tougher than the one we just went through," CDC Director Robert Redfield told the Washington Post in an interview.

As the current outbreak continues to taper off, as shown by a recent decline in hospitalization rates and other signs, authorities have to prepare for a probable resurgence within the months ahead.

"We're going to have the flu epidemic and therefore the coronavirus epidemic at the same time," he said, and also the combination would put even more significant strain on the nation's healthcare system than the first outbreak.

The virus, which causes a highly infectious and possibly fatal respiratory disease dubbed COVID-19, emerged late last year in central China. The first known U.S. infection, a travel-related case, was diagnosed on Jan. 20 in Washington State near Seattle.

Since then, nearly 810,000 people have tested positive within the U.S., and over 45,000 have died from the disease.

Redfield and other public health authorities credit drastic stay-at-home orders and widespread business and college closings across the country for slowing the spread of infections. But the restrictions have also stifled American commerce while throwing a minimum of 22 million people out of work over the past four weeks.

Even as the lockdown is gradually eased, Redfield stressed the importance of people continuing to practice social distancing among one another.

At the same time, he said, public health authorities must vastly work up a testing system to spot people who are infected and to locate their close personal interactions through contact tracing.

Asked about the recent flurry of street protests of stay-at-home orders and needs states to be "liberated" from such restrictions - as President Donald Trump has advocated on Twitter - Redfield told the Post: "It's not helpful."

Building a nationwide contact tracing network, the key to preventing newly diagnosed cases from spreading into large outbreaks, acts a serious challenge because it's so labour intensive, requiring a workforce that by some estimates would require as many as 300,000 personnel.

Redfield said the CDC is discussing with state officials the possibility of enlisting and training workers from the U.S. Census Bureau, and volunteers from Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, to form a new contact tracing workforce.