Concerts and Sporting Events Won't be Safe until Fall, 2021 at the earliest

There are some experts out there saying that measures similar to what we are experiencing now should continue into 2022, and it would be dangerous to allow large crowds to gather in places like concerts and sporting events through 2021.

Public health expert on coronavirus: Concerts and sporting events won't be safe until 'fall 2021 at the earliest'

As governors across the U.S. consider when exactly to reopen state economies amid the coronavirus outbreak, a former White House health official warns that large gatherings likely could not safely resume until at least the fall of 2021.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who served as special advisor for health policy to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration, told a recent New York Times panel that "restarting the economy has to be done in stages... Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — ... I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically we're talking fall 2021 at the earliest."

Dr. Emanuel, who is currently Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, added that the overall experience is "going to be this roller coaster, up and down. The question is: When it goes up, can we do better testing and contact tracing so that we can focus on particular people and isolate them and not have to reimpose shelter-in-place for everyone as we did before?"

Tsai advised testing and social distancing to continue until there is "definitive data" that the pandemic is over.

"There are going to be multiple recurrences that occur throughout the summer," Tsai said, adding that "we still have to keep our eye on the ball and be vigilant as those cases resurface because the data from the other countries have shown that once we lift these quarantine measures, then the chances of community transmission increase."

According to a separate study by Harvard — unaffiliated with Tsai — coronavirus cases could surge again during the winter. To prevent that, the authors wrote, "prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022" unless "critical care capacity is increased substantially or a treatment or vaccine becomes available."