• Question: Statistically, what are the chances of a new outbreak of Covid-19 worldwide?

    Asked by anon-256590 on 18 Jun 2020. This question was also asked by anon-256601, anon-256951.
    • Photo: Sabrina Slater

      Sabrina Slater answered on 18 Jun 2020: last edited 18 Jun 2020 1:44 pm

      Hey Miguel,
      Pretty high unfortunately! We are seeing a lot of “second waves” of infection. This happens because the “first wave” of infection hasn’t been dealt with properly, so the viruses is hanging out at a low level in the population. Sooner or later, when people start moving around again and coming into contact with new people, all these people who are carrying the virus (most of the time they don’t even know they are because they have no symptoms!) will start spreading it around again. But it’s not all bad news, we know for sure that washing our hands, wearing masks indoors and limiting our contact with new people works to stop the virus from spreading. Without humans passing it around, the virus can’t survive.

    • Photo: Eleanor Williams

      Eleanor Williams answered on 19 Jun 2020:

      Adding on from what Sabrina said, the current pandemic is at some point going to end up being more endemic – so it moves to just existing in our population as a known and recurring problem but not necessarily at the massive levels we’re seeing at the moment where things are more out of control. In the past diseases like Smallpox and Polio were endemic and we’ve either eradicated or significantly reduced those with vaccines. Malaria for example is a disease that is currently endemic in several parts of the world and we take precautions to prevent it spreading out of control.

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