SAN FRANCISCO, March 31 (Xinhua) -- There might be a risk of a resurgence or second peak of the COVID-19 if restrictions including social distancing and quarantine are lifted too early, according to a biologist with Stanford University.

Erin Mordecai and a team of researchers developed an interactive website to explore how different interventions affect COVID-19's spread by modeling the virus spread over time with non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing and quarantine, according to a report published on the university's website on Monday.

"Our models suggest that beginning interventions early - before the epidemic has grown too large in a given community - is far more important than precisely how much we cut down on social contacts. It makes clear that if we impose social distancing for a short or medium time period - several weeks to months - and then lift restrictions altogether, we expect to see a resurgence of disease transmission because many people will still be susceptible," Erin Mordecai said in the report.

"We saw this during the 1918 flu pandemic when many U.S. cities lifted their restrictions after 3-8 weeks and saw large second peaks of flu transmission," she said. That pandemic eventually infected about a third of the world population and killed 50 million people.

"To avoid a resurgence of COVID-19, we need to apply multiple interventions over a long period of time - 12 to 18 months or more - until effective treatments and/or vaccines are widely available," she suggested.

It doesn't mean a total lockdown for a year or more. Adaptive strategies that actively switch on and off interventions can allow for periods of greater mobility while still keeping the epidemic at levels the healthcare system can manage. "Improved testing capacity will allow us to use more targeted approaches to identify and isolate infected people and their social contacts," said Mordecai.

She said that observing what's going on in China and South Korea will be very informative for the rest of the world, as the two countries are seeing declines in cases and returning to more social interaction. Enditem

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