Science- Protests over the death of
George Floyd have been ongoing in many American cities for a week. - Some experts are concerned that there could be a resurgence of
COVID-19 cases as a result. - If you want to
protest , you can mitigate risk by wearing a face mask, and quarantining away from elders and other vulnerable populations when you get home.
George Floyd died one week ago after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for over eight minutes.
As protests calling for all four of the police officers involved in his death to be brought to justice continue in cities across the US, public
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said "a spike in COVID-19" cases is "inevitable," while Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told her residents Monday "if you were out protesting last night," it's probably a good idea to get a coronavirus test this week.
"There is still a pandemic in America that's killing black and brown people at higher numbers," Bottoms said.
Demonstrations are not risk-free from coronavirus exposure, but it's generally tougher for viruses to fester outdoors in the fresh air, and wearing a mask or shield can create a secondary line of defense to help prevent the virus from spreading at protests when people talk, chant, or yell.
"As an African-American physician, I do not want to tell people not to protest, because I think it's been an effective tool to press groups to try to fight for change and try to fight for equal rights," emergency medicine Dr. Garth Walker, who treats coronavirus patients in Chicago, told Insider.
"When I put on my medical hat, of course, not protesting is the safest way," Walker said. "But when I'm thinking of oppressed communities, when they're weighing staying home during an environment where there has been instance after instance of oppression and brutality versus a pandemic, honestly, each of them seem just as dangerous. So there's no right answer."
It's still possible that you could get sick from attending a protest, especially if you're standing shoulder to shoulder with other protesters for a long time, or remain in spitting distance of their words for minutes or hours.
Tear gas, which is being deployed by police departments across the country, could also exacerbate virus spread since it causes people to cough and breathe on each other.
"It's very, very irritating to the upper respiratory passages and it's going to make people cough and sneeze," Dr. Dean Winslow, an infectious disease physician at Stanford Health Care, told Insider. "I would certainly discourage law enforcement from using those sorts of riot control techniques."
Wearing a mask while protesting, and quarantining away from vulnerable family members when you get home, can both help
If you go out to protest, Walker, Winslow and the other health experts Insider spoke with for this story all said the usual coronavirus guidelines for being in public still apply: wear a mask, bring hand sanitizer with you, and try to keep a six foot distance from others.
"If you're going to go out and protest, you're putting yourself at risk," Walker said, but he says debating or weighing that risk right now is "not the greatest use of our time."
"Black and brown communities feel moved. Communities in Chicago, where I reside, feel moved," he said. "We are essentially at a zenith of our tolerance and expressing that through protests."
If you live with older people or at-risk populations with hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease, quarantine away from them for two weeks after you get home from any protests, so you're not breathing the same air, engaging in face to face conversations, touching the same doorknobs, or sharing food or utensils.
"I think it really is not a binary answer," Walker said, echoing the words of former President Barack Obama, who posted on Medium early Monday about the protests.
It could take one or two more weeks for new coronavirus cases to emerge
Danielle Ompad, an associate professor of epidemiology at New York University, says a resurgence of COVID-19 because of the protests is possible. The average incubation period for the virus is about two weeks, meaning that we could see the public health effects of the protests in about a week or two.
"On one hand, as an epidemiologist I'm really concerned that people are going to be exposed to COVID and that we're going to see an uptick in cases," she told Insider. "On the other hand, we need to protest, because clearly everything we've done up to now has not gotten the system to change. And as a non-black person it's not for me really to say 'don't protest.'"
She reiterated that protesters mitigate their risk of contracting the virus by maintaining distance from others while they march, and wearing masks at all times, even though it might be uncomfortable since the weather is hot and people are speaking loudly and yelling.
Dr. Winslow suggested that if you must take your mask off while out, you should make sure you're even more than six feet away from others, and "preferably downwind."
"I would probably get a test if I had been out and about this weekend," Ompad said. "We do want to make sure to the best of our abilities that we're reducing the opportunity to transmit COVID, because it would be a tragedy if we saw cases increase and affect the black community on top of what's affecting them now."
In an emailed statement to Insider, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said "it is too early to know what, if any, effect these events will have on the federal COVID-19 response," while cautioning that "protests and large gatherings make it difficult to maintain our recommended social distancing guidelines, and may put others at risk."
This story has been updated with a statement from the CDC.
Read the original article on Insider