Before you send the invites, consider what resulted from a Memorial Day party in Cape May
DAVID CRUZ, NJTV NEWS JUNE 11, 2020
Whether Gov. Phil Murphy is responding to political pressure or, as he says, letting the data dictate dates, more of New Jersey is becoming more accessible to more of New Jersey’s people. But that new openness comes with a risk.
In almost two dozen instances across the country, states have reported an uptick in cases of COVID-19 after easing restrictions, from Florida to Washington state. Epidemiologist Stephanie Silvera of Montclair State University explains how that happens: “All you need is one person who’s sick who can now quickly spread it to create this cluster of cases,” she said.
And that’s exactly what happened in South Jersey. You may have heard about a cluster of cases — more than a dozen at this point — in Bucks County, Pennsylvania that were traced to a house party in Cape May County, about 100 miles away.
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David Damsker runs the health department in Bucks County. “We noticed pretty early. We had one particular day on Saturday where we had a lot of people from the same area of Bucks County that were all younger. And we started making some phone calls. We’re asking them and a few people mentioned being in New Jersey over Memorial Day weekend,” Damsker said.
Indoors, at a party, with food and drinks.
“So when we started making the other phone calls, we then started asking about that specifically and we started getting more people with the same exact experience, so we knew right there we had a source area for cases,” he said.
An optimist might say, “Hey, that’s some good contact tracing there,’” but someone else might say, “Hey, this is why you can’t just swing the doors open to the state.” Damsker notes that nationally, only one-third of positive cases have actually been traced.
Silvera says the governor’s message Tuesday was not “we’re out of the woods.”
