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Marshfield Clinic Physician Talks Social Distancing

Tuesday, March 17th, 2020 -- 1:34 PM

(WDLB) -A Marshfield Clinic Health System physician says social distancing is the key to stopping the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Infectious disease Epidemiologist Doctor Ed Belongia calls the COVID-19 pandemic "a very scary situation that everybody needs to pay attention to." He says the only thing we can do right now to protect people is what has become known as social distancing.

"In other words, stop transmission. This social distancing is the key to flattening the curve. And what that means is we spread out the cases over a longer time. We'll probably prevent some people from getting sick, which is good. And even the people who would get sick anyway, by spreading it out, we allow the health care system to have more capacity to respond, because it's not all happening at once."

Dr. Belongia is urging everyone to pay attention to and follow the recommendations of health officials.

"I think most experts think that this is the long haul. This is not going to be a short-term thing, and things are going to sort of go back to normal. There’s going to be a new normal and we’re not quite sure what that’s gonna be yet, but it’s not what we had before.”

Dr. Belongia says that, as weather warms up, we may see a reduction in transmission. He says other coronaviruses do spread in humans and have been around for a long time, but they don't cause the severe illness that COVID causes, and they do tend to go away in the summer. He says it’s too early to tell if that's going to happen with COVID, and it might not happen at all.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.