Professor and surgeon Johns Hopkins says the coronavirus could be “more extinct” by April.
Marty Makary, who teaches at the University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in an opinion piece published Friday in the Wall Street Journal that daily infections have dropped 77 percent since January.
“There is reason to believe that the country is heading for an extremely low level of infection,” Makary wrote. “As more people became infected, most of whom had mild or no symptoms, there were fewer Americans left to become infected. At the current trajectory, I expect COVID to disappear for the most part by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.
Vaccinations and the large number of people already infected in the United States – more than 28 million – could contribute to the immunity of the herd in the spring, Makary said. Herd immunity occurs when enough people become immune to a virus, ending its spread. Makary also said he would protect against new strains of the spreading coronavirus.
“When the virus chain has been broken in several places, it’s harder to spread – and that includes the new strains,” he said.