The Washington, D.C.-area is on its way to becoming a coronavirus hot spot comparable to the one in New York City, according to the governor of Maryland.
The D.C.-metropolitan area, which consists of the city and parts of Maryland and Virginia, has started to see exponential growth in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, but the outbreak has remained much smaller than the one in New York City. President Trump has expressed optimism that the area could reopen in a few weeks, but Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan warned the region’s outbreak could become severe.
“Look, I think the virus is gonna dictate the time frame, and we’re gonna follow the advice of the scientists and doctors like Dr. Inglesby, who you just had on a moment ago. He’s on our task force. But no, we don’t see any way that we’re going to be opening back up in a couple of weeks,” Hogan said.
“The Washington-metropolitan area has, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia, quadrupled in the past week, and we see that continuing to grow exponentially, and we think in two weeks around Easter we’re going to be looking a lot more like New York,” he added.
Hogan said there is “no question” the outbreak could start to mirror the one in New York City.
“In spite of the fact that we’ve taken some of the most aggressive steps in the country on social distancing and we were out front ahead of nearly every state on some of these things we’ve been taking unprecedented actions every day for the past three weeks, it’s continuing to grow at really kind of frightening paces,” Hogan said.
“We think it’s gonna be worse in two weeks, not better,” Hogan explained.
As of Sunday, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia had a combined total of 2,471 confirmed cases with Maryland carrying more than half of those cases. The three areas had a total of 37 deaths. New York has more than 59,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 965 related deaths.
