GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The head of Prevea Health says social distancing efforts across the state are working in the fight against the COVID-19 Coronavirus.
Dr. Ashok Rai says one piece of evidence is the number of flu cases across the state.
“The influenza season came to a sudden and complete halt. We’ve never seen that before,” Rai told WTAQ. “It’s purely due to social distancing.”
This year’s flu season was expected to be pretty bad before the onset of COVID-19. Rai says it’s not a fluke: and they’re not mislabeling flu cases as COVID-19.
“People are worried that we’re attributing every single death to COVID-19, and we’re not,” Rai said. “There are some criteria associated with that, risk vectors associated with that, laboratory testing.”
COVID-19 has surpassed heart disease as the number one cause of death in the United States.
“We’ve gotten the virus to slow down in our area,” said Rai. “Not completely go away, but it allows healthcare to create a threshold high enough to take care of people.”
Praising local efforts, Rai says it could still be some time before we truly know when we’ll be able to return to normal–but some normalcy could return as early as next month.
“I’ll never say anything is impossible. I’ve just seen the impossible happen with this pandemic,” Rai said Monday. “14 days from today will take us through the end of April, so planning for May is not inappropriate.”
Non-essential businesses have been closed since March 25th. Bars and Restaurants have been restricted to take out and delivery only since March 17th.
