WASHINGTON — President Trump is extending the White House’s social distancing guidelines for coronavirus.
“We will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread,” Trump said in a press conference on the White House lawn.
Trump said the peak of coronavirus deaths could hit in the next two weeks. He previously hoped that the country would be re-opened for business by Easter, April 12th. Now he’s hoping the country will get back on track by June 1st.
Coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said extending guidelines is the right move.
“The decision to prolong, or to extend this mitigation process until the end of April I think was a wise a prudent decision,” Fauci said. “We’ve already got areas of the country like New York. Now we will start seeing places like Detroit and other cities start to get into trouble.”
As of Monday morning, 122,653 Americans have been infected with coronavirus so far, 2,112 of which have died. Over 59,000 of those infected in the US are in New York alone along with 965 people killed.
During his news conference, Trump said he received what he called the “most accurate” or “most comprehensive” study today about the potential death toll from Covid-19. He said there could be up more than 2 million cases if “we did nothing” but he did not give more details on the exact number.
Trump is expecting the availability for all Americans to be tested for the virus to increase dramatically over the next week or so.
CNN contributed to this article
