One has to be careful about drawing conclusions from the any one data point about COVID-19.
Recent numbers have shown signs of stabilization, only to be followed by what looks like a relapse. The number of new cases reported daily, globally, of COVID-19 hit a high on April 12th, at 99,100, then declined to 74,800 cases per day, on Wednesday, April 22nd, but then shot up again on April 24th to a new high of 102,200, according to figures maintained by Johns Hopkins University[1].
In the U.S., too, data shows daily cases plateauing recently, only to be followed by a subsequent new high in daily cases.
As some U.S. States re-open their economies, and as other locations around the world consider ways to re-open, some researchers are making the case that arbitrarily removing measures such as quarantine, and other "non-pharmaceutical interventions," could quickly bring a resurgence of the disease.
In particular, a study by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, posted this week on the medRxiv pre-print server, argues that interventions have helped to lower the incidence of the disease, and removing such measures arbitrarily could prompt a very rapid return of the disease.
"The number of cases averted in two weeks of intervention will be regained in only one week," if all measures are completely relaxed, according to the paper, titled, "Decline In Global Transmission Rates Of COVID-19[2]."
A prominent takeaway from the work is the need for increased testing to more swiftly detect patterns in the disease's spread.
The paper is authored by Ethan Romero-Severson of the Theoretical biology and biophysics unit at LANL, along with colleagues Nick Hengartner and Ruian Ke of that unit, and Grant