New York Times: Fears of a second wave of Corona due to American protests

Mass protests against US police brutality, which have taken thousands of people out of their homes to the streets in cities across the country, raise the spectre of a new corona outbreak, prompting political leaders, parents and public health experts to warn that crowds could cause more cases, the New York Times reported.

While many political leaders stressed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear facial supres, maintain social spacing to protect themselves and prevent further social spread of the virus.

More than 100,000 Americans have already died from 19 deaths, and non-whites have been the hardest hit in the United States, where hospital treatment and mortality rates among black Americans exceeded their white counterparts.

The protests in dozens of cities, which came after African-American George Floyd was killed while police tried to detain him in Minneapolis, reflect the double and cumulative tensions arising from decades of police killings and the sudden loss of family and friends to the virus, the paper said.

The spontaneous influx of protests is taking place, with many states cautiously reopening after weeks of stay-at-home orders with millions of unemployed people in the United States, and restaurants, schools, beaches and parks under scrutiny as the public initially exercises new forms of social spacing.

In Los Angeles, where demonstrations led to the closure of corona test centers on Saturday, Mayor Eric Garcetti warned that protests could become high-prevalence events, referring to types of gatherings, usually held in internal sessions, that could lead to an explosion of secondary infections.