Re: “Due to the intense contagion of this new COVID virus...”
That remains to be proved.
Compare the COVID numbers to the influenza numbers...
The CDC estimates that 39 million to 56 million Americans were infected with seasonal influenza in the last 6 months, and that 24,000 to 62,000 of them died.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
According to the Johns Hopkins COVID Dashboard...
Total USA COVID Tests - 3.57 million
Total USA Positive COVID Tests - 707,000
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
So, roughly, a 20% COVID infection test rate, even though most of those tests have been given to high risk individuals.
In California, Oregon, and Washington state, the infection rate has been less than 9% of tests since COVID first arrived.
Bottom Line...
COVID-19 looks exactly like a bad flu season - nothing more, nothing less.
“The CDC estimates that 39 million to 56 million Americans were infected with seasonal influenza in the last 6 months, and that 24,000 to 62,000 of them died.”
The Santa Clara County SARS-CoV-2 antibody study (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1) indicates the true infection rate is 50-85x the number of positive cases. Therefore, at least 35 million (and possibly 60 million) Americans have been infected. Nearly all (99.9%) have recovered.
Because hardly any humans on the planet had exposure to this virus, they pretty much all get exposed and have the virus enter their systems, although it seems that possibly many are asymptomatic. I still say it is therefore more infectious than an influenza. But we are debating a minor difference.