Virginia would have enough medical resources to handle the coronavirus outbreak for the next couple of months if current trends continue, according to a group of scientists from the University of Virginia and RAND helping the state model the likely course of the disease.

But Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said later Monday that while projections showed Virginia should have enough overall hospital bed space and general medical resources, the availability of personal protective gear, ventilators and staffing is an ongoing problem around the state.

“Right now, Virginia’s hospitals have sufficient capacity to handle the surge in patients that we expect,” Northam said. But the modeling “also demonstrates that if we lift the stay-at-home order or social distancing too soon, if we try to rush to get our lives back to normal, the number of cases will spike higher and earlier and we can’t afford that.”

The study group, along with state Secretary of Health Dan Carey, said Monday in a media briefing that “Current social distancing efforts are working.”

Virginians have cut back on retail and recreation activities by 44 percent, according to anonymized mobility data from Google, the scientists said. Visits to grocery stores are down 18 percent and travel to workplaces is down 39 percent, according to the data. Northam has banned gatherings of 10 or more people, urged nonessential businesses to shut down and instructed residents to shelter at home unless they have pressing reason to go out.

“I think the average Virginian really needs to listen to the guidance of the state officials and try to do what they’re asked because it’s working,” said Chris Barrett, executive director of the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute. Lifting the restrictions could lead quickly to a second wave of infections, the scientists said.

Carey said Northam’s administration is studying the projections to plan for how and when to ease the state out of the policies, which run through June 10 — looking at the data to find “triggers for when you open a certain amount.”

Beyond the timing, though, officials are looking ahead to new policies that might need to be in place once broader restrictions are rolled back.

“We definitely need to have additional strategies” to plan for a gradual reopening of society, Carey said. That could mean a more complex regimen of testing to identify exactly who has been infected, body temperature testing for people as they head back to their places of work and mobile apps for tracing contacts among individuals to pinpoint everyone’s risk of transmission, he said.

About 85 scientists and researchers at the Biocomplexity Institute have been developing computer models to chart the possible course of the disease in the state, taking work done elsewhere and adapting it for regional differences and data around Virginia.

Their projections suggest a range of possible trajectories but have led Northam to say he anticipates the peak period of infection to occur sometime between late April and late May.

The researchers found that if Northam’s restrictions expire on June 10 and then business in the state immediately returns to about half its usual capacity, a steep second wave of coronavirus cases would surge soon after. Left unaddressed, that wave would overwhelm most hospital systems in the state by August — with Northern Virginia being hit soonest and hardest.