U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Friday said “hot spots” for the expanding coronavirus outbreak such as Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans are going to have a worse week next week compared to where they were this week.
Dr. Adams said they’re hopeful that numbers in New York, the hardest-hit state, will start to slow next week.
“We also see hot spots like Detroit, like Chicago, like New Orleans that will have a worse week next week than what they had this week,” he said on “CBS This Morning.”
In a separate interview, Dr. Adams said some areas in the country are going to need “a lot more” than the 15-day period that’s coming to a close soon during which the federal government advised the public to avoid crowds and stay at home if possible.
“I think in some places definitely we’re going to need a lot more,” Dr. Adams said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Some places haven’t hit their peak yet, and what we’re looking to do in the next week or two is really give people the testing data that they need to make informed choices.”
President Trump announced the 15-day timeline on March 16 as a way to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus amid the expanding pandemic. He said this week that it would be great if the U.S. could open back up by Easter, or April 12.
“Some places, it doesn’t matter if it’s Easter or if it’s Memorial Day, or if it’s Labor Day — we know that we want people to be thinking about what they can do now so that we can quickly get through this with as few deaths and as few hospitalizations as possible,” Dr. Adams said on ABC.
Mr. Trump on Thursday said in a letter to the nation’s governors that the administration is working on new guidelines for state and local officials to use in making decisions about potentially relaxing some of the restrictions that have been put into place.
The president said new testing capabilities will help classify counties, and that they plan to suggest guidelines labeling counties as low-risk, medium-risk or high-risk.
Dr. Adams was asked on ABC how those classifications would work practically in terms of slowing the spread without more consistency across the country.
“The way it works is through cooperation,” he said.
“We want to make sure people are talking to each other so that if they’re in a high-risk area, they’re taking appropriate precautions,” Dr. Adams said. “If they are in a lower-risk area, it doesn’t mean that you stop social distancing, it doesn’t mean that you stop washing your hands, it doesn’t mean you stop doing the things that we’re telling everyone to do.”
“But it means you may not have to be on total lockdown the way that we see New York City and places in California are,” he said.
The U.S. now has the most positive coronavirus cases in the world with more than 86,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. There have been more than 1,300 coronavirus-related deaths.
New York has been the hardest-hit individual state, with more than 37,200 positive cases and at least 385 deaths as of Thursday.
But as Dr. Adams said, new hot spots have been developing in various places around the country, including in Louisiana.
Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday said the New Orleans area could run out of ventilators by early April if the rate of new cases does not slow.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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