Trump Proposes Labeling Regions As High And Low Risk So That Some Places Can Return To Semblance Of Normalcy
President Donald Trump has signaled his determination to reopen parts of the country in recent days, and the latest proposal would involve a targeted approach that would rely heavily on testing, which has been a weak spot for the country. But public health experts warn against lifting physical distancing restrictions, even in places that haven't had a surge of cases yet.
The New York Times:
Trump Says He Will Label Regions By Risk Of Coronavirus Threat
President Trump said Thursday that he planned to label different areas of the country as at a “high risk, medium risk or low risk” to the spread of the coronavirus, as part of new federal guidelines to help states decide whether to relax or enhance their quarantine and social distancing measures. “Our expanded testing capabilities will quickly enable us to publish criteria, developed in close coordination with the nation’s public health officials and scientists, to help classify counties with respect to continued risks posed by the virus,” Mr. Trump said in a letter to the nation’s governors. (Karni, 3/26)
The Associated Press:
Trump Says Feds Developing New Guidelines For Virus Risk
“I think we can start by opening up certain parts of the country: you know, the farm belt, certain parts of the Midwest, other places,” Trump said Thursday in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity. “I think we can open up sections, quadrants, and then just keep them going until the whole country is opened up.” The president has been trying for days to determine how to contain the economic fallout of the guidelines issued by his administration as well as local leaders to slow the tide of infections. (Miller and Suderman, 3/27)
The Washington Post:
Trump Pushes To Open Up The Country During Coronavirus Pandemic As Governors In Hard-Hit States Warn More Needs To Be Done To Combat Pandemic
But the president’s upbeat assessment conflicts with warnings from public health experts that abandoning current restrictions too soon could be potentially catastrophic. And his posture has distressed the leaders in states where the virus is spreading exponentially — overwhelming hospitals, exhausting medical supply stockpiles and ravaging communities. (Costa, Vozzella, Dawsey and Nakamura, 3/26)
NBC News:
Trump Tells Governors He Is Setting New Coronavirus Social Distancing Guidelines
Although the president said in the letter that "there is still a long battle ahead," Trump said Tuesday he wants the country back to business by April 12, Easter Sunday, even though his own public health officials have warned that the outbreak will get worse. (Clark, 3/26)
NPR:
Prepare For Outbreaks Like New York's In Other States, Warns Anthony Fauci
Over a thousand people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, and over a third of those deaths have taken place in New York. Nearly half the confirmed cases in the United States are in New York. The state has become a coronavirus hot spot — anyone leaving New York City is being asked to self-quarantine for two weeks. A key adviser to President Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House coronavirus task force, says other states need to prepare to take on outbreaks of this scale. (Renken, 3/26)
The Hill:
EXCLUSIVE: Top CDC Official Warns New York's Coronavirus Outbreak Is Just A Preview
American health officials are deeply concerned that the coronavirus outbreak that has overwhelmed New York City hospitals in recent days is just the first in a wave of local outbreaks likely to strike cities across the country in the coming weeks. In an exclusive interview, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said her agency is seeing early signs that the number of cases in other cities are already beginning to spike. While New York City is home to almost half the cases in the country at the moment, other cities are seeing their case counts rising at alarming rates. (Wilson, 3/26)
The Wall Street Journal:
Trump Administration To Issue Guidelines For Classifying U.S. Counties By Coronavirus Risk
Ambassador Deborah Birx, special representative for global health, said the administration wants to use a “laser-focused approach” to its social-distancing guidelines but said it needs “very clear data” at the state and county level to be able to do so. She declined to give a timeline for when she expected to have that level of data. Vice President Mike Pence, moments later, said advisers planned to present data to the president this weekend, but didn’t offer specifics. Earlier this week, the president said he hoped to have the economy “just raring to go” by Easter, which falls on April 12, just under a month after the administration first issued its social-distancing guidelines. (Ballhaus, 3/26)
Politico:
Trump Teases New Coronavirus Distancing Guidelines Based On County Risk
The new initiative, however, would require a significant ramp up of the nation's capacity to test Americans for the virus. And it's unclear when states and counties will be able to conduct testing on that scale, after earlier stumbles hampered the nation's response to the pandemic. (Oprysko, 3/26)
CNN:
Trump Touts Success As US Becomes World's Coronavirus Epicenter
All the evidence of the virus's advance, seen in rising death tolls and infection figures, suggests the situation is getting worse and that normal life could be weeks or months away. Once, Trump minimized the looming impact of the crisis. Now his assessments conflict with the reality of its deadly march. (Collinson, 3/27)
The Associated Press:
Not All Or Nothing: Anti-Virus Lockdowns Could Lift Slowly
For the millions of Americans living under some form of lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus, not knowing when the restrictions will end is a major source of anxiety. Will life events — weddings, funerals, even just simple nights out with friends — be delayed for a few weeks, a few months or much longer? President Donald Trump gave one answer this week, saying he hoped businesses would reopen by Easter, on April 12, citing the severe damage restrictions have done to the economy. Most public health experts, however, caution that it would be reckless to lift restrictions before COVID-19 infections have peaked and begun to ebb — unleashing a second wave of cases that could be just as damaging to the economy. (Larson and Alonso-Zaldivar, 3/27)
In other news on the president and his response to the crisis —
The New York Times Fact Check:
Trump’s Baseless Claim That A Recession Would Be Deadlier Than The Coronavirus
WHAT WAS SAID: “You have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death. Probably — and I mean definitely — would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.” — at a news conference on Monday. “You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression.” — during a virtual town hall on Fox News on Tuesday. This lacks evidence. Though the question of the overall impact of recessions on mortality remains unsettled, experts disputed Mr. Trump’s claim that an economic downturn would be more deadly than a pandemic. (Qiu, 3/26)
Los Angeles Times:
U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Top 1,000, Trump Claims He Saved Lives
Confronted with criticism about the lagging federal response to the coronavirus crisis, President Trump often boasts about his Jan. 31 decision to restrict travel from China, where the outbreak began, claiming he saved thousands of American lives. But Trump has repeatedly overstated the effect of his decision, and the supposed opposition to it, even as he has misrepresented federal efforts to develop a vaccine and supply protective masks, ventilators and other critically needed gear. (Stokols, Megerian and Bierman, 3/26)
Politico:
‘We Don’t Want To Be Tone-Deaf’: Trump Allies Test Coronavirus Messaging
President Donald Trump wants to reopen parts of the U.S. economy hit by the coronavirus outbreak. Allies close to his 2020 campaign operation are raising red flags — warning it could be imprudent to inject more uncertainty into an already unpredictable crisis. Those concerns intensified this week when Trump identified Easter Sunday as his target date for relaxing some of the social distancing guidelines his administration has put in place to slow the spread of the virus. The prospect of watching Americans shuffle into “packed churches” on April 12, an image Trump said he hopes to see, has alarmed some of his closest supporters who fear that rushing to end the economic clampdown — without full support from public health experts — could have catastrophic consequences on his bid for reelection. (Orr, 3/27)
The Washington Post:
As Trump Signals Readiness To Break With Experts, His Online Base Assails Fauci
A cadre of right-wing news sites pulled from the fringes in recent years through repeated mention by President Trump is now taking aim at Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, who has given interviews in which he has tempered praise for the president with doubts about his pronouncements. Although both men are seeking to tamp down the appearance of tension — “Great job,” Trump commended the doctor during the White House’s briefing on Tuesday — the president is increasingly chafing against medical consensus. (Stanley-Becker, 3/26)
