Fresh Coronavirus Wave Won’t Require Shutdown, White House Says

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. won’t have to shut down its economy again if there’s a resurgence of the coronavirus outbreak as the nation starts to reopen, President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said.

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said in an interview on Bloomberg Television that he’s been told by a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force he didn’t name that a second wave of the outbreak wouldn’t require a shutdown.

“One of the senior people in that group, now I asked that person what happens -- right now the virus numbers are flattening out. That is a really good thing. That means we can reopen this economy. I asked this person ‘What happens if we get a jump back up in virus numbers?”’ Kudlow said. “And the response was simply ‘Look -- we won’t have to re-shut down because first of all we know more, we have more experience, second of all we are much better equipped with the right tools.”’

Trump has urged states to begin reopening their economies even as the outbreak continues to grow in most of the country. There have been nearly 1.3 million cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. and at least 75,670 deaths from the disease, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Labor Department announced Friday that the U.S. experienced unprecedented job losses in April as Americans practiced social distancing to curb the spread of the virus, shuttering restaurants, retail stores and other businesses. Trump had intended to run for re-election on the strength of the U.S. economy before the pandemic, and Democrats have charged that his administration was unprepared for the outbreak.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.