As COVID-19 surges across the US, Missouri is one of two states trending in the right direction
The fall surge appears to be here.
Cases of COVID-19 are on the rise in most states, and some health experts say it could be a while before that trend comes to an end.
Infectious Disease Specialist Agnes Kresch says, "The whole scary part of this is we haven't yet even started flu season."
The United States is averaging at least 55,000 new, known COVID-19 cases per day.
That's more than a 60-percent hike since mid-September.
Epidemiologist & Public Health expert Dr. Abdul El-Sayed says, "I'll be honest with you. I'm extremely worried. And epidemiologists have been predicting a fall spike for a long time."
As of Sunday, only two states, Missouri and Vermont, are showing at least a ten-percent drop in new cases.
Former CDC Disease Detective Dr. Seema Yasmin says, "When you have people congregating en masse, not wearing masks, not doing physical distancing, barely using hand sanitizer, those are the perfect conditions in which you get the spread of the coronavirus from one person to another."
Despite the increase in cases and deaths, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the nation, does not want to close down the country again.
Dr. Fauci says, "Put shut-down away and say 'we're going to use public health measures to help us safely get to where we want to go.'"
Some state leaders are pushing new restrictions while vaccine research and testing continue.
Brown University School of Public Health Dean Dr. Ashish Jha says, “Most Americans are going to be getting vaccinated in 2021 and we’re probably looking at a March-April, if things go very well, timeframe when let’s say a large proportion of American people get access to vaccines.”
According to a CNN review of Census Bureau population estimates, Connecticut and New Jersey seem to have reached the qualifications needed for their own travel restrictions, that call for out-of-state travelers to self-quarantine for 14-days.
