While many parts of the world appear to be   near   the acme of their current Covid-19 outbreaks , wellness officials in the US are warning that a second wave could strike in winter – and it holds the potential to be even more devastating than the first .

Robert Redfield , the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) , told theWashington Postthat the US could face a second wave of Covid-19 after in the year that will be even more ruinous than the current waving because it will   clash with the starting line of the seasonal flu season .

“ There ’s a theory that the violation of the computer virus on our state next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through , ” Redfield said in an interview withthe Poston Tuesday . “ And when I ’ve said this to others , they kind of put their nous back , they do n’t translate what I think . ”

“ We ’re die to have the grippe epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same sentence , ” he sound out .

Each year , typically in the capitulation and wintertime , the one-year grippe season puts a gigantic strain on healthcare organization . The2018 - 2019 influenza seasonin the US saw around 490,600 hospitalisation and 34,200 deaths from the flu . As we ’ve seen recently with the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak , this too putsa huge strainon hospital bed , aesculapian equipment , and healthcare professionals , even in the best - prepare portion of the world .

Fortunately , the worst of the influenza time of year was over by the clock time the   wave of Covid-19 infection took hold in most constituent of the world . If this was n’t the case , however , it could have spelled serious trouble . Redfield notes that if the Covid-19 pandemic top out during the winter months at the same prison term as the flu season , “ it could have been really , really , really , really difficult in damage of health capacity . ”

While there ’s no telling how severe the next burst of contagion could be , nor when it might peak , scientists have been worrying aboutthe idea of a “ second wave”for some prison term .

“ The most plausible scenario to me is for the COVID-19 pandemic to wane in the late spring ( in the Northern Hemisphere ) , and come back as a second undulation in the winter , which I look could be even worse than what we ’re face now , " Francois Balloux , a professor of Computational Systems Biology and Director of UCL Genetics Institute at University College London , commentedin March 2020.“Something similar materialise in 1918/1919 . "

Indeed , the1918 Spanish influenza pandemicis a powerful admonisher to be aware of the 2d wave . In sum , the influenza outbreak is thought to have   stamp out   over 50 million people , with some estimation going as gamy as 100 million . The first wave resemble a fairly typical flu epidemic . However , once the second wave came towards the death of the summer ,   the fatality rate skyrocket .

Comparisons of Covid-19 with other disease outbreak should be treated with caution , but it would also be goosey to ignore warning from history .