John F. Bonamo, M.D., MS, FACOG, FACPE, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical and Quality Officer, RWJBarnabas Health, discusses when we may see a return to normal life in New Jersey.
TRANSCRIPT:
People ask me when will we be normal again, when will we get back to our regular lives?
I think for that to happen we have to see a few things. We have to see a significant number of people vaccinated, and we have to see the transmission rate of the disease drop significantly and we have to get back into something called the containment phase.
Currently, we are still in a terrible community spread phase. We almost reached a containment phase back in this past summer, the summer of 2020. In July and August, we really saw the numbers go down.
We saw probably the lowest numbers were mid-September. Mid-September we turned and started to rise again.
I think, between the vaccine and the things that people are doing, and the change in weather which does tamp down the virus, by this summer, we will start to feel very normal.