Social Distancing May Be Necessary Until 2022 if No Vaccine Found: Harvard Study

A sparsely occupied Grand Central Station appears at midday in New York City on March 18, 2020. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

The United States may have to continue practicing social distancing measures until 2022 unless a vaccine for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus becomes available soon, according to researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science on April 14, used estimates of seasonality, immunity, and cross-immunity for betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1 from time series data from the USA to inform a model of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus strain that causes COVID-19) transmission.