Whether or not there’s a “next” surge, we’re still in one, says Dr. Ebony Hilton-Buchholz, an associate professor anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the University of Virginia. Baseline levels of COVID-19 remain high, with hundreds of people dying each day. “We’ve never left the first wave,” she says. “We need a peak and a trough, and we haven’t reached the trough. We keep creating new peaks.”