“Perfect storm’ of coronavirus transmission brewing for July 4

The U.S. could be headed for a “perfect storm” of factors that could lead to a major coronavirus spike after the Fourth of July holiday weekend – on top of the record 50,000 cases that were announced Thursday.

“It’s set up a perfect storm: the combination of travel, the combination of reopening – perhaps in some cases, too early – and the combination of people not necessarily following some of these preventive guidelines,” Dr. Joshua Barocas, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center, said during a Wednesday briefing by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, reported CNN.

Memorial Day weekend was a good example of that, he said, when some states saw spikes in cases afterward. Only New Jersey and Rhode Island continue to show decreases in the number of new cases, he said.

“I’m very concerned, especially given this coming weekend, that the same types of spikes, the same types of surges could be seen – not just in the places that are currently experiencing surges, but in places that have already experienced surges and in ones that haven’t yet,” he said, according to CNN.

“It’s very difficult to predict what might happen, and the Fourth of July weekend could play a big role in this,” concurred Dr. Ricardo Franco, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Officials all over the country on Thursday were urging people to hold back on July 4 celebrations, as 40 of 50 states saw confirmed cases rising, the Associated Press reported.

Florida alone saw 10,109 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed, a new single-day record for the state, The Washington Post reported Thursday. New