Alessandro Vespignani, a disease modeler at Northeastern University in Boston, warns that relaxing measures like social distancing now could turn this into a bigger surge. Instead, he says, we need more time for the vaccination campaign to roll out.

“We really need to keep fighting for a few weeks,” he says. “We see that light at the end of the tunnel and it’s just a matter of keeping things together for a few more weeks. It’s a matter of choice at this point.”