“No kisses and hugs until 2022”

If the present shows itself in all its drama, the more immediate future risks disappointing our expectations a lot. At least on being able to return to live as before within a few months. It will not be so and apparently we will have to renounce kisses, hugs and handshakes for a long time. According to a study done by the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health, the Institute of Public Health of the prestigious US university, measures of social distancing will be necessary not only in the Coronavirus emergency phase, but for a longer period. Probably, even in 2022. Only in this way will it be possible, in short, to control the epidemic and avoid the risk of new infections.

Possible “tap” openings and closings

According to the research, how long we will have to keep away to curb the Coronavirus pandemic is not exactly clear. What is certain is that, using a mathematical model applied to the United States of America, it has been assessed that one-off interventions will be insufficient to maintain the Covid-19 epidemic in the context of the sustainability of intensive care in the country. The good thing is that seasonal variations in the transmission could facilitate the control of the epidemic during the summer period but it is easy to think that we can see a new increase in cases with the appearance of autumn. To save the salvable, therefore, scholars speculate about “tap openings and closings”, depending on the climatic situation and its consequences on the course of the virus.

Pregliasco: “it will be a life of special supervised”

To support the thesis that the road to exit completely from the tunnel is not close and that we will find ourselves practically living as special supervised is also the virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco, of the University of Milan, who underlines how the new password for the near future must be ‘gradualness’. “We cannot think – he says – that the recovery and reopening of activities and social life will happen overnight and as if nothing had changed. The recovery will in fact take place with a gradual exit strategy and I believe that we will still have to maintain some “limitations.

Gradual and differentiated restart according to age groups

For example, he notes, “I think that limitations will still have to be maintained for a long time for events that cause large gatherings.” And again: schools and businesses reopened, “we will have to continue to adopt precautionary measures such as the safety distance”. The restart also, according to the expert, “should also take into account a gradualness on the basis of age groups, with greater precautions for the elderly and the most fragile subjects”.

Isolation measures also to “defuse” the asymptomatic

An invitation to the utmost caution in the restart also comes from Pierluigi Lopalco, professor of Hygiene and at the University of Siena and epidemiology manager in the coronavirus task force of the Puglia Region. “Precautionary measures will have to be taken to prevent the risk of a return epidemic, also considering the role of positive but asymptomatic subjects,” he warns. From Chinese studies it would seem that the dispersion of the virus by asymptomatic positives, he explains, “would occur for 4-5 days, therefore for a limited time. Isolation measures, therefore, are also effective to defuse the risk of transmission from asymptomatic “. It is presumable that, even after the restart, “new outbreaks may exist. For this – he concludes – we must think of a very strong surveillance system”.