DES MOINES, Iowa — Labor Day weekend brought concerns of a potential spike in coronavirus cases across the nation; one public health expert said time will tell how well Americans managed mitigation efforts over the holiday.
Dean of Brown University School of Public Health Dr. Ashish Jha said professionals are starting to gauge what the next few months may look like.
"In many ways, we're in better shape than we were let's say at the worst of the summer so late July was really where the country peaked with about 75,000, 80,000 cases a day. We're about half that," Jha said.
"That's the good news. The bad news is that- Memorial Day when we began the summer we were at 20,000 new cases a day, so in many ways we're in much worst shape entering the fall than the summer. And know in the fall with schools and colleges opening, we're going to probably see a lot more case ahead," Jha said.
The majority of cases reported in counties with high infection rates have been in young adults 19-25 years old. Dr. Jha said that's good and bad news.
"The real sort of good news in this piece is that we are getting better at treating people so people are spending less time in the hospital," Jha said.
"Somebody who might have stayed for two weeks might be discharged after five, seven days because they get better. Then there are younger people getting infected more now and they are less likely to be hospitalized.
What we've learned though when the infections rise in young people it doesn't just stay in young people it eventually does spread to older people and people with chronic disease."
Hospitalizations in Iowa have continued to rise since July, however deaths are trending downward as the fall comes closer.