Northeast Showing Signs Of 'Silent Spread,' Birx Says In Visit

Hours before the state announced another round of troubling coronavirus numbers, one of the White House's top coronavirus experts expressed concern of an "asymptomatic silent spread" in the Northeast during a visit to Massachusetts.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, met with Gov. Charlie Baker at the State House Friday morning before visiting Boston University and speaking with the presidents of nearby universities at the Broad Institute in Cambridge.

It wasn't made clear what Birx and Baker discussed. She later likened trends in the Northeast to what happened in the South when people went inside to escape the heat.

"We do see some of those early signs that we saw across the South after Memorial Day, a sense that there's early, asymptomatic silent spread occurring in communities," Birx said.

Birx said public places aren't the concern right now, but rather people letting their guard down with more familiar faces in more intimate settings.

"Now is the time to act in the Northeast and that means we have to change our personal behaviors," she said.

The Department of Public Health later Wednesday announced 734 new coronavirus cases and 12 more deaths related to the virus.

One of the most concerning numbers is the amount of people hospitalized with COVID-19. Friday's report said there were 500 hospitalizations, lifting the three-day average to 65 percent of the low recorded in August. The last time the three-day average was at 500 was in late July.

Materials from the State House News Service was used in this report