Trump Says He’ll Unveil Reopening Plans With Virus Hitting Peak
Trump Says New Infections Hitting Plateau in Some Parts of U.S.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he will unveil guidelines to relax stay-at-home rules on Thursday, citing signs that the coronavirus outbreak is plateauing in parts of the country.
“The battle continues, but the data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases,” Trump said Wednesday at a Rose Garden press conference. “These encouraging developments have put us in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country, which we’ll be announcing -- we’re going to be talking about that tomorrow.”
Trump has been eager to ease social-distancing measures that have caused businesses nationwide to shutter, costing more than 16 million Americans their jobs in the past month. But it isn’t clear that states -- or their residents -- would follow a federal move to ease guidelines so people could return to work.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump spoke with more than 200 leaders from nearly every corner of the U.S. economy in four calls to seek input on reopening the country. Executives from the finance industry told the president that more testing for the virus would have to be in place before people would be comfortable returning to work.
The coronavirus has infected nearly 620,000 people in the U.S., leaving more than 27,000 dead.
Deborah Birx, one of the top public-health experts on the White House coronavirus task force, backed the president’s claim that social-distancing practices have helped, but stressed caution.
“We see as a country, we’re improving. We see as metro areas, we’re improving. We see as communities, as counties and as states, we’re improving,” Birx said at the press conference. “But that also still requires everyone to continue to social distance.”
“To all of you that are out there that would like to join together and just have that dinner party for 20, don’t do it yet,” Birx added.
Most researchers and public health officials believe the coronavirus will continue to circulate in the U.S., as it continues to find susceptible people to infect. It’s unfolding differently across the country, with some areas experiencing massive outbreaks as others are just starting to see infection rates climb. While some may have reached their first peak, a return of the virus could cause future swells.
“While I feel cautiously optimistic that it may be plateauing, I wouldn’t count on the fact that we have seen the worst of this,” said Lisa Maragakis, senior director of health care epidemiology and infection prevention for the Johns Hopkins health care system. “I don’t think we can say yet that we are past the peak because there are so many factors that could rekindle transmission and resurgence. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
The virus is hitting different parts of the U.S. with varying levels of ferocity, with the highest case levels being seen on the East and West coasts. Four of the top five counties for fatalities are in New York, led by Queens with 2,105 deaths, though Detroit comes in at the fifth spot.
There are also hot spots in Florida, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana and Arizona, with emerging infections in pockets throughout the country, mainly centered on regional cities such as Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Still, there are vast swaths of the north, Midwest and the center of the country that have few cases.
“We have communities that are at different stages in the outbreak,” Maragkis said. “It’s easy to get lulled into a sense that maybe we could be back to normal, but we know viral transmission can brew and be more widespread before you realize it.”
Visits to the doctor for influenza-like symptoms, which would be primarily coronavirus at this point, varied substantially across the U.S. during the first week of April, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eight states reported very high levels, while 18 had high levels. At the other end of the spectrum, 16 reported minimal cases and 12 were low.
Tensions between Trump and states over when and how to reopen the economy boiled over this week. On Tuesday, the president backed away from an earlier claim that he has “ultimate authority” to reopen the country after broad criticism from legal scholars and governors, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo, who warned of “a constitutional crisis like you haven’t seen in decades” if the president sought to lift social-distancing requirements over states’ objections.
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution reserves for states all powers that aren’t specifically granted to the federal government.
“They know when it’s time to open, and we don’t want to put pressure on anybody,” Trump said Tuesday at a White House briefing. “I’m not going to put any pressure on any governor to open.”
Trump said he’ll hold a teleconference with governors on Thursday. In his Tuesday briefing he predicted they would be “very, very respectful of the presidency.” When asked if he would withhold federal aid from states that don’t abide by his suggestions for a reopening strategy, Trump said he wasn’t making a threat and predicted state leaders “will listen” to his advice and requests.
Earlier Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said on KCBD News that, “It is time for Texans to go back to work.”
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