Some fear coronavirus surge with influx of summer visitors

Tourists are surging back to Cape Cod and with them come money, beach toys, traffic — and the coronavirus?

According to Dr. Vanessa Kerry, director of Harvard Medical School’s Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change, an uptick in cases is possible with more people on the move during the summer months.

“Cape Cod is going to be a hotbed for tourists, and we should expect and anticipate an influx of infections with that movement of people,” Kerry told Jim Braude on WGBH’s "Greater Boston" show.

There is no question that tourists, second-home owners and snowbirds have arrived.

The Woods Hole, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority parking lot in Hyannis was full Friday, and reopened hotels and rental properties report strong bookings, said Wendy Northcross, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and member of the Cape Cod Reopening Task Force.

But state Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, called predictions that tourist areas such as Cape Cod would be part of a second wave well before the fall “alarmist.”

“Certainly we need to remain vigilant,” said Cyr, who is spokesman for the reopening task force.

The statistics for COVID-19 are trending downward in Barnstable County and across the state, with hospitalizations and deaths declining by the day, Cyr said.

“I’m cautiously optimistic we can limit community spread,” he said.

He bases his optimism on the state’s ability to track trends and on people following Gov. Charlie Baker’s guidance to practice social distancing and wear masks when they cannot be at least 6 feet away from those who are not members of their immediate household.

Cyr said it looked like a regular summer day in Provincetown when he got a haircut there recently — but unlike other years, people wore facial coverings.

To encourage residents and tourists alike to follow Baker’s guidance, the reopening task force is offering COVID-19 signs for businesses on its website.

Businesses can use the website to print signs with a variety of messages, from “Go Big on Social Distancing” to “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Mask, No Service.”

The idea is to take the burden of enforcement off summer servers and store clerks, Cyr said. He said that although most people are accommodating, he is familiar with “entitled tourist” syndrome from summers waiting on tables.

Crane Appliances in Orleans has had a sign up for a while asking customers to follow protocol.

“Everyone’s been absolutely compliant,” said Robert Carveiro, a member of the sales staff.

“We haven’t had anyone resist following the guidelines,” he said.

Outdoors is another issue.

Main Street in Hyannis presented a kaleidoscope of masking activity Friday. Some pedestrians wore masks while strolling the street, while others went barefaced.

Other individuals masked up as they approached strangers.

All four members of a group of visitors from Springfield wore masks, despite the 80-degree weather.

“The weather makes it bad. It’s hard to breathe sometimes,” said Yesenia Lorenzo, 20.

But she and her companions, who had just dined outside on fresh seafood and gone shopping, said they thought it was important to follow Baker’s safety protocols.

When people come together who have not previously been together, “there is a risk for spread,” said Dr. Timothy Brewer, a professor of epidemiology and of medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health.

“What are the risks and benefits? It does look overall as though things are trending in the right direction” in Massachusetts, said Brewer, who used to live in Cambridge and camped at Nickerson State Park in Brewster.

As long as visitors follow masking, social distancing and hand-washing protocol, there’s no need to skew the love-hate relationship Cape Cod has with tourists on the negative side, Brewer said.

The risk of transmission is heightened in areas of poor ventilation, when respiratory droplets from one person can more easily find their way to another person, Brewer said.

With the cancellation of indoor concerts and theatrical productions, there has been a shift to small-group gatherings outside this summer.

But with the Cape’s population more than doubling in the summer from approximately 215,000 to 500,000 people, the increased risk of infection is on the minds of Cape Codders responsible for public health and the area’s economic wellness.

Boston — an area from which the Cape draws many tourists — was one of the nation’s coronavirus hot spots, after all.

A state Department of Public Health map colors Suffolk County in the deepest shade of blue in the state for the highest incidence of cases, while Barnstable County is the second-to-lightest shade of blue — in line with Berkshire, Hampshire and Franklin counties in the less densely populated western region of the state.

And tourists do not come only from Massachusetts. They arrive here from places such as Florida and Arizona, which had a record number of coronavirus cases Friday.

Kerry, who was not available for comment, told WGBH she believed a new wave of coronavirus cases was occurring and blamed it on faulty policies and leadership, although she applauded Baker’s precautions in Massachusetts.

Sean O’Brien, head of the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment, said during a reopening task force briefing Thursday morning that the rise in numbers in some Southern states was part of their first wave.

“We peaked in early April,” O’Brien said.

“We’re going to constantly keep an eye on what’s going on nationally when it comes to surveillance,” O’Brien said. But he said people should not be surprised to see coronavirus trends varying in different parts of the country at different times.

“We’re going to see a lot of these little pockets come up,” O’Brien said.

Cyr said part of his “cautious optimism” stems from the fact that fear of contagion from New Yorkers and other second-home owners who fled to the Cape this spring didn’t pan out.

Facebook and other social media were filled with posts for and against the phenomenon, with some folks getting downright vituperative.

But it turned out that part-time Cape Codders did not clog hospital beds or turn Barnstable County a Boston shade of deep coronavirus blue.

“They were clearly following the rules — social distancing, wearing masks, hand-washing,” Cyr said.

“People are adapting to the new normal,” he said.