On July 24th, 2020, Dr. Jeff Duchin gave an update on the COVID-19 outbreak in King County as the current seven-day average of new cases reached the highest level since the beginning of April. Dr. Duchin addressed the importance of minimizing the number of close contacts people have outside the house and emphasized the need for making long-term behavior changes.

We need to fundamentally rethink the way we go about our lives, the way our environments are structured, to decrease the risk of COVID-19 and to reset our expectations about when we might get back to our pre-COVID lifestyles. It’s not going to happen in the near future and we need to come to terms with that. We need to think through how we as individuals, as families, businesses and as community members can interact as safely as possible and respect one another by taking the prevention measures very seriously. The alternative will ultimately be increasing numbers of serious illnesses for some of our most vulnerable community members and bad outcomes that will inevitably occur even among healthy younger people.”

Dr. Jeff DUchin