Tag Archives: U.S. states

California orders residents to wear masks outside the home

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California on Thursday ordered residents to wear masks at nearly all times outside the home, saying the strict new rule was necessary because too many Californians were neglecting to cover their faces during the coronavirus pandemic.

The mandate is one of the broadest of any U.S. state, requiring Californians to wear masks any time they leave the home, with exceptions made for people eating and drinking in restaurants or exercising outdoors, as long as they maintain 6 feet of physical distance.

“Simply put, we are seeing too many people with faces uncovered, putting at risk the real progress we have made in fighting the disease,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a stern statement announcing the new directive.

“California’s strategy to restart the economy and get people back to work will only be successful if people act safely and follow health recommendations. That means wearing a face covering, washing your hands and practicing physical distancing,” Newsom said.

The statement left unclear how the state intended to enforce the order, which recommends face coverings even for people driving alone in their cars. Representatives for the California Department of Public Health could not be reached for comment.

About a dozen other U.S. states and some major cities have face-covering rules, although most apply in situations where social distancing isn’t possible or to shared indoor spaces such as stores and public transportation.

Most states have more limited mask guidelines. Montana, South Dakota, Wisconsin and South Carolina have none.

California, the most populous U.S. state with 40 million residents, was the first state to impose sweeping statewide clampdowns on residents and mandatory business closures, on March 19.

Since then California, like most states, has slowly eased those rules to reopen its damaged economy, although some restrictions remain in place.

The state has recorded more than 163,000 cases of COVID-19 and 5,281 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)

Some scold, others cheerlead: U.S. states tackle reopening differently

By Maria Caspani and Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The two most populous U.S. states took markedly different approaches to reopening on Monday with New York scolding local governments for not enforcing social distancing and California encouraging counties to restart economies if they met criteria.

Scenes of merrymakers gathering outside bars prompted the governor of New York, the state hardest hit along with New Jersey by the coronavirus pandemic, to urge local officials and businesses on Monday to strictly enforce reopening guidelines.

“To the local governments I say, ‘Do your job,'” Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters. Over the weekend he criticized New York City street crowds outside bars and asked people to adhere to six feet (two meters) of distance from others.

Both Cuomo and neighboring New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said they were keeping open the option of reimposing restrictions if officials fail to stop large public gatherings that risk leading to a second wave of infections.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has left it up to individual counties on when to reopen once they meet state guidelines. He reminded county officials of the risks of not restarting economies, as well as reopening them.

Newsom told a news briefing on Monday people could not be “locked away for months and months and months,” especially those among the 5.5 million Americans who have lost their jobs since mid-March. He said some had also lost health coverage and were among the many people suffering severe mental and physical health problems during the pandemic.

In enforcing coronavirus restrictions, he said the state and counties could not “see lives and livelihoods completely destroyed without considering the health impact of those decisions as well.”

“As we mix, as we reopen, inevitably we’re going to see an increase in the total number of cases; it’s our capacity to address that that is so foundational,” said Newsom.

NEW FORECAST

California is one of four states that is projected to see the biggest spike in deaths in the months ahead, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

Its new forecast on Monday forecast over 200,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States through the beginning of October, mainly due to reopening measures underway.

The IHME, whose estimates are cited by many health experts, projected Florida will see its deaths nearly triple to 18,675 deaths from 6,559 on June 10, while California can expect to see deaths increase by 72 percent to 15,155 from 8,812, it said.

Georgia and Arizona also have sharp increases in deaths forecast by the institute.

New York and New Jersey between them account for more than a third of the nearly 116,000 U.S. deaths, but deaths and hospitalizations have been on the decline of late. Both have followed strict health guidelines for reopening businesses when all measures of infection drop – new cases, deaths, hospitalizations and positive rates among those getting tested.

Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration director who has advised the White House on the coronavirus, said on Monday that flare-ups needed to be addressed with aggressive contact tracing and targeted responses.

“We’re not going to be able to shut down the country again this summer. We’re probably not going to be able to shut down the country again this fall,” he said on CNBC.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington, Jonathan Allen and Maria Caspani in New York, Lisa Shumaker in Chicago, Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Writing by Sonya Hepinstall and Andrew Hay; Editing by Howard Goller, Bill Tarrant and Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. states accuse 26 drugmakers of generic drug price fixing in sweeping lawsuit

By Diane Bartz and Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – Twenty-six drug manufacturers were sued on Wednesday by the attorneys general of most U.S. states and several territories, which accused them of conspiring to reduce competition and drive up generic drug prices.

The lawsuit accused Novartis’ Sandoz unit, Teva Pharmaceuticals’ Actavis unit, Mylan, Pfizer Inc and other drugmakers of conspiring to rig the market between 2009 and 2016 for more than 80 drugs.

Attorneys general from 46 states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories said the defendants prioritized profit over the public interest, depriving millions of consumers of lower prices for needed medication.

Ten executives, including many sales and marketing directors, are also defendants in the 543-page complaint filed in a federal court in Connecticut.

Novartis spokesman Eric Althoff said the instances of misconduct related to its $195 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in March “do not support the vast, systemic conspiracy the states allege.”

The settlement resolved allegations Novartis fixed generic drug prices between 2013 and 2015.

Pfizer spokeswoman Sally Beatty said the drugmaker did not believe it engaged in unlawful conduct. Mylan spokeswoman Lauren Kashtan said her company had found no evidence of price-fixing. Teva did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit follows similar cases over generic drug prices brought in 2016 and 2019, and which remain pending.

Brand names of some of the drugs at issue include glaucoma drug Xalatan, acne drug Differin, anti-seizure medicine Dilantin, anti-fungal medicine Lotrimin AF Cream, and Ritalin for attention deficit disorder.

“Through phone calls, text messages, emails, corporate conventions, and cozy dinner parties, generic pharmaceutical executives were in constant communication, colluding to fix prices and restrain competition,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said. “They took steps to evade accountability.”

(Reporting by Diane Bartz and Jonathan Stempel; Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee and Caroline Humer; Editing by David Gregorio and Richard Chang)

‘This is about livelihoods’: U.S. virus hotspots reopen despite second wave specter

By Andrew Hay

(Reuters) – Facing budget shortfalls and double-digit unemployment, governors of U.S. states that are COVID-19 hotspots on Thursday pressed ahead with economic reopenings that have raised fears of a second wave of infections.

The moves by governors of states such as Florida and Arizona came as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States could not afford to let the novel coronavirus shut its economy again and global stocks tanked on worries of a pandemic resurgence.

As Florida reported its highest daily tally of new coronavirus cases on Thursday, Governor Ron DeSantis unveiled a plan to restart public schools at “full capacity” in the autumn, arguing the state’s economy depended on it.

North Carolina reported record COVID-19 hospitalizations for a fifth straight day on Thursday, a day after legislators passed a bill to reopen gyms, fitness centers and bars in a state where more than one in ten workers are unemployed.

Governors of hotspot states face pressure to fire up economies facing fiscal year 2021 budget shortfalls of up to 30% below pre-pandemic projections in the case of New Mexico, according to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank. Nevada, which has seen cases increase by nearly a third in the past two weeks, is suffering 28% unemployment, based on U.S Bureau of Labor statistics.

“This is about saving lives, this is also about livelihoods in the state of Arizona,” Governor Doug Ducey told a news briefing, adding that a second shutdown of the economy was “not under discussion” despite official figures showing a 211% rise in virus cases over the past 14 days.

About half a dozen states including Texas and Arizona are grappling with rising numbers of coronavirus patients filling hospital beds.

Ducey and Texas Governor Greg Abbott say their hospitals have the capacity to avoid the experiences of New York, where the system was stretched to near breaking point as some COVID patients were treated in hallways and exhausted workers stacked bodies in refrigerated trailers.

‘FOOT ON THE BRAKE’

A second wave of coronavirus deaths is expected to begin in the United States in September, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said on Thursday, citing a surge in mobility since April. Its latest model projects 170,000 deaths by Oct. 1, with a possible range between 133,000 and 290,000.

A note of caution came from Utah, where Governor Gary Herbert said most of the state would pause its reopening after a 126% rise in cases over the past two weeks.

Austin, Texas on Thursday also said it would likely extend stay-at-home and mask orders past June 15 after the state reported its highest new case count the previous day. Austin health officials blamed a record week of infections on easing business restrictions and Memorial Day gatherings.

There was no talk of new shutdowns.

In New Mexico, Health Secretary Kathy Kunkel pointed to outbreaks at the Otero County Prison Facility, as well as in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, as factors behind an uptick in cases.

“It means a little bit of a foot on the brake, watch carefully for the next couple of weeks, not much in the way of major changes in what we’re doing,” said Human Services Secretary David Scrase.

(Reporting By Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Austin and David Schwartz in Phoenix; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Daniel Wallis)

U.S. coronavirus cases surge in southwestern states

(Reuters) – Twenty-one U.S. states reported weekly increases in new cases of COVID-19, with Arizona, Utah and New Mexico all posting rises of 40% or higher for the week ended June 7 compared with the prior seven days, according to a Reuters analysis.

The three southwestern states joined hot spots in the South to help push the national number of new infections in the first week of June up 3%, the first increase after five weeks of declines, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

(Open https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser for a Reuters interactive)

In New Mexico about half of the new cases were from one prison in Otero County, state health officials said.

Utah said at least 287 of the state’s 2,269 new cases were tied to an outbreak at a meat processing plant in Cache County.

Arizona did not immediately respond when asked to comment.

Many states have ramped up testing for the novel coronavirus in recent weeks. Nationally, over 545,000 tests were reported in a single day last week, a new record.

In Arizona, the percentage of tests that came back positive for the new virus rose to 12% in the week ended June 7, from 7% a month ago, according to the Reuters analysis. In Utah, the positive test rate rose to 9% from 4%.

Nationally, the rate of positive tests has hovered between 4% and 7% for several weeks.

In the South, new cases of COVID-19 in Florida, Arkansas, South Carolina and North Carolina all rose by more than 30% in the past week.

Florida attributed the increase to more testing, while South Carolina was investigating outbreaks in three counties. The other states had no immediate comment. Positive test rates held steady in these states over the past four weeks, the analysis showed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended states wait for new COVID-19 cases to fall for 14 days before easing social distancing restrictions.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have met that criteria for the week ended June 7, compared with 13 states the prior week, the analysis showed. Pennsylvania and New York lead with eight straight weeks of declines.

Graphic – Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S.: https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-USA/0100B5K8423/index.html

Graphic – World-focused tracker with country-by-country interactive: https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/COUNTRIES/oakveqlyvrd/index.html?id=united-kingdom

(Reporting by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

Where U.S. coronavirus cases are on the rise

By Chris Canipe and Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – Twenty U.S. states reported an increase in new cases of COVID-19 for the week ended May 24, up from 13 states in the prior week, as the death toll from the novel coronavirus approaches 100,000, according to a Reuters analysis.

South Carolina had the biggest weekly increase at 42%. Alabama’s new cases rose 28% from the previous week, Missouri’s rose 27% and North Carolina’s rose 26%, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

New cases in Georgia, one of the first states to reopen, rose 21% after two weeks of declines. (Open https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser for a Reuters interactive)

Nationally, new cases of COVID-19 fell 0.8% for the week ended May 24, compared with a decline of 8% in the prior week. All 50 states have now at least partially reopened, raising fears among some health officials of a second wave of outbreaks. The increase in cases could also be due to more testing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended states wait for their daily number of new COVID-19 cases to fall for 14 days before easing social distancing restrictions.

As of May 24, 15 states had met that criteria, up from 13 in the prior week, according to the Reuters analysis. Washington state, where the U.S. outbreak started, has the longest streak with cases falling for eight weeks in a row, followed by Hawaii at seven weeks and Pennsylvania and New York at six weeks.

Washington state posted the biggest drop in cases, down over 50%, followed by Kentucky, where new cases fell nearly 30%. New York saw new cases drop 23%, according to the Reuters analysis.

Texas saw new cases fall 15% after they rose 22% in the prior week.

(GRAPHIC: Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S. – )

(Reporting by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

New cases? Deaths? U.S. states’ reopening plans are all over the map

By Makini Brice

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has set some distinct goals the federal district needs to meet in order for her to feel comfortable ending a stay-at-home order, she told reporters last week.

If the U.S. capital, which reported more than 7,200 cases and around 400 deaths by Monday, hits certain metrics, including a declining number of cases over 14 days and sustained low transmission rate, she could lift the order before it expires on June 8.

Neighboring Maryland, home to tens of thousands who commute to D.C. for work, is looking at a different set of data to determine whether it is ready to open up. It includes a plateau in the rate of hospitalizations and the number of cases in hospitals’ intensive-care units.

Virginia, home to tens of thousands more who commute to D.C., has another metric altogether. Governor Ralph Northam said in April the state needed to see a decrease in the percentage of positive tests over 14 days, a decrease in hospitalizations, have enough hospital beds and intensive care capacity and a sustainable supply of personal protective equipment.

This situation, with three different leaders using different criteria to decide how to reopen – has been replicated throughout the country, according to data https://www.nga.org/coronavirus-reopening-plans compiled by the National Governors’ Association.

Luisa Franzini, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, said every state seems to be using its own criteria to determine whether to reopen.

None is really meeting all the metrics set out by the federal government, Franzini said. Instead, local governments appear to be picking “what seems to be working for them.”

New York, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, said it would need 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 people, and 90 days of PPE stockpiles before it can “re-open.” Next-door New Jersey is looking for a “14-day trend line” of dropping cases and hospitalizations and has already allowed some beaches to reopen.

Kansas said it needed to see stable or declining case rates over 14 days, but has opened most businesses. Neighboring Missouri, which Kansas City straddles, reopened all business on May 4. South Dakota, site of one of the largest hot spots, said it could not have clusters that posed a risk to the public, and neighboring Minnesota has reopened retail shops.

As the novel coronavirus bore down on the United States, the White House on March 13 issued national state of emergency guidelines and state after state-ordered many businesses closed in a bid to curb the spread.

In April, the federal government provided a set of guidelines on when states should reopen – including declining numbers of COVID-19 cases over the course of 14 days; a downward trajectory of positive tests as a percentage of total tests; and a robust testing program for at-risk healthcare workers.

But, as with many aspects of handling the pandemic, the final say on how to reopen lies with state and local officials, who under the U.S. Constitution hold the authority to make laws related to residents’ health and welfare.

Federal lawmakers, meanwhile, have not set any new standards for workplace safety, although they could.

“There has not been the slightest hint of interest on the part of Congress in creating a national uniform set of rules on business closures and re-openings,” said Robert Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas. None of the guidelines from the White House are legally binding, he noted.

The patchwork approach means that some states may do better than others at controlling infections, experts say.

“I hate to say it in these terms,” said Raymond Scheppach, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, “but I think we’re in a period of experimentation.”

 

(Reporting by Makini Brice in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Dan Grebler)

To keep COVID-19 patients home, some U.S. states weigh house arrest tech

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – How do you ensure that someone sick with COVID-19 stays home?

As the United States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether house arrest monitoring technology – including ankle bracelets or location-tracking apps – could be used to police quarantines imposed on coronavirus carriers.

But while the tech has been used sporadically for U.S. quarantine enforcement over the past few weeks, large scale rollouts have so far been held back by a big legal question: Can officials impose electronic monitoring without an offense or a court order?

Case in point is Hawaii, which considered the sweeping use of GPS-enabled ankle bracelets or smartphone tracking apps to enforce stay-at-home orders given to arriving air passengers, according to Ronald Kouchi, the president of the Hawaii state senate.

Kouchi said Hawaiian officials were concerned that many travelers were flouting the state’s 14-day quarantine order, putting the archipelago’s inhabitants at risk. But he said that the plan for mass tracking of incoming travelers – inspired by similar technology in place in South Korea – was put on the back burner after the Hawaii attorney general’s office raised concerns.

“America is America,” Kouchi told Reuters. “There are certain rights and freedoms.”

In response to written questions to the attorney general’s office, Hawaii’s COVID-19 Joint Information Center said the “various ideas being evaluated for tracking those under mandatory quarantine in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are right now just that, ideas.”

Similar ideas have already been executed in a few other states, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Seven people who broke quarantine rules in Louisville, Kentucky were court-ordered to wear GPS-tracking devices manufactured by Colorado-based SCRAM Systems, according to Amy Hess, the city’s chief of public services. She told Reuters that while she would rather not have had to use the devices at all, state law permitted the imposition of home confinement to protect public health.

“We don’t want to take away people’s freedoms but at the same time we have a pandemic,” she said.

In West Virginia’s capital, Charleston, Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford told Reuters his force had leased 10 additional location-monitoring ankle bracelets from GEO Group Inc. at the outset of the epidemic “to be on the safe side,” although he said they’ve so far just sat on the shelf.

Industry executives including Shadowtrack Technologies Inc. President Robert Magaletta, whose Louisiana-based company supplies nearly 250 clients across the criminal justice system, said they had fielded calls from state and local governments about repurposing their tools for quarantine enforcement, although they wouldn’t name the prospective buyers.

Kris Keyton, of Arkansas-based E-Cell, said he had recently been approached by a state agency that wanted to adapt his detainee-tracking smartphone app for quarantine enforcement.

He said the changes the agency requested were purely cosmetic, including swapping out the word “client” – E-Cell’s term for arrestees – with the word “patient.”

“They just wanted to reskin our app,” he said.

“UNCHARTED TERRITORY”

The industry has two main ways of keeping track of offenders: One is through the traditional ankle bracelet, a battery-powered device which is fastened to a person’s leg and is monitored through GPS. The other is through a smartphone app, either used in conjunction with facial or voice recognition technology to make sure it’s attached to the right person or, as with the app made by E-Cell, tethered via Bluetooth to a fitness tracker-style wrist band to ensure it stays on or near the person it is meant to follow.

A QR code-enabled version of the app-and-wrist band solution is already being used in Hong Kong to enforce quarantines on incoming travelers. Poland uses a facial recognition-powered version of the technology that regularly prompts users to upload a selfie to prove they’re indoors.

Other governments are weighing similar technology, said Magaletta of Shadowtrack, who said he was in talks with half a dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

In a call with reporters last month, Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union noted that several governments were toying with the idea of using smartphones as ad hoc ankle monitors.

“As a technological matter that probably would be effective as long as too much precision is not expected,” Stanley said. But he cautioned that enforcement approach to public health “often tends to backfire.”

Magaletta also foresaw thorny issues as far as the United States was concerned, saying he was less comfortable tracking patients with COVID-19 than he was enforcing house arrests for convicted criminals.

“Can you actually constitutionally monitor someone who’s innocent?” he asked. “It’s uncharted territory.”

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; editing by Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin)

Georgia cafes, theaters open as U.S. states ease more restrictions

By Rich McKay and Susan Heavey

ATLANTA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Georgia on Monday will start allowing residents to dine inside restaurants or watch a movie at a theater, as more U.S. states from Minnesota to Mississippi took steps to ease coronavirus restrictions despite the warnings of health experts.

Colorado, Montana and Tennessee were also set to reopen some businesses to start reviving their battered economies. Oklahoma, Alaska and South Carolina, along with Georgia, previously took such steps following weeks of mandatory lockdowns that threw millions of Americans out of work.

President Donald Trump and some local officials have criticized Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for orders that enabled restaurants and theaters to join a list of businesses, such as hair and nail salons, barber shops and tattoo parlors, he allowed to reopen last week with social-distancing restrictions.

One restaurant chain, Waffle House, was imposing seating arrangements in Georgia that will keep patrons at least six feet apart, stricter sanitization measures and a requirement that employees wear masks, CEO Walt Ehmer told WSB-TV.

“I know the unemployment system has been enhanced to help take care of the most vulnerable people, but people want to have jobs, and they want to have something to do and take care of their families,” Ehmer said. “I think it’s going to give them some hope.”

Public health authorities warn that increasing human interactions and economic activity may spark a fresh surge of infections just as social-distancing measures appear to be bringing coronavirus outbreaks under control.

Meanwhile, the number of known infections in the United States kept climbing on Monday, topping 970,000 as the number of lives lost to COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory illness caused by the virus, surpassed 54,800.

ROADMAPS

Officials in some of the hardest-hit states such as New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have been emphasizing for weeks that more testing and contact tracing for the virus needed to be in place before they could implement roadmaps for restarting their economies.

Contact tracing involves tracking down and testing people who may have been around anyone already infected.

“Testing is the way forward, and it’s been a long fight just to get the testing,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a briefing on Monday.

He said a new “self-swab” test, which allows patients to administer it to themselves under the supervision of medical personnel, will be available this week at sites run by New York public hospitals.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said in a Twitter message that he would announce a roadmap for “responsibly reopening” the state at a news conference on Monday.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday that businesses including manufacturing and construction in parts of the state with fewer cases of the virus might reopen after his shutdown order expires on May 15.

In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis has given the green light for retail curbside pickup to begin on Monday. Hair salons, barber shops and tattoo parlors may open on Friday, with retail stores, restaurants and movie theaters to follow.

“I would stay home if the government encouraged that, but they’re not. They’re saying, ‘Hey, the best thing to do is go back to work, even though it might be risky,’” Royal Rose, 39, owner of a tattoo studio in Greeley, Colorado, told Reuters.

In a further step to ramp up supplies to fight the pandemic, Trump planned to meet with American textile industry representatives on Monday as clothiers seek to shift their production lines to face masks and other critical items, the White House said.

Companies are aiming “to repurpose their factories from making things like T-shirts into gowns and masks and things like cotton swabs” used for coronavirus testing, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News.

Business shutdowns have led to a record 26.5 million Americans filing for unemployment benefits since mid-March with predictions from the Trump administration that the jobless rate would likely hit 16% or more in April.

“The next couple of months are going to look terrible,” Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters on Sunday.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem on Monday said she hoped Smithfield’s Sioux Falls pork processing plant can reopen soon, a day after U.S. labor regulators urged the meat industry to adopt certain measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus among workers. The country’s meat plants have emerged as hot spots for the spread of the virus.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Susan Heavey in Washington; additional reporting by Maria Caspani and Jessica Resnick-Ault; writing by Grant McCool; Editing by Frank McGurty and Howard Goller)

CDC director says 19-20 U.S. states may be ready to reopen May 1

By Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday he believes 19 or 20 U.S. states have had limited impact from the new coronavirus and their governors believe they may be ready to reopen by President Donald Trump’s May 1 target date.

“There are a number of counties within this country that have not experienced really any coronavirus despite testing,” Robert Redfield said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“There are a number of states – 19, 20 states – that really have had limited impact from it. So I think we will see some states that are, the governors feel that they’re ready, we’re poised to assist them with that reopening,” Redfield said.

Trump said on Monday evening he was close to completing a plan for ending America’s coronavirus shutdown, which has thrown millions out of work, and may restart the battered U.S. economy in some areas even before May 1. He said around 20 states were “in extremely good shape and could reopen fairly quickly.

The president took renewed aim at the World Health Organization at the briefing, saying he has instructed his administration to halt U.S. funding to the Geneva-based institution over its handling of the pandemic.

Redfield would not directly answer a question about the president’s decision but said the CDC and WHO have had a long history of working together on global health outbreaks.

“We’ve had a very productive public health relationship,” he said. “We continue to have that.”

The CDC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have put together a public health strategy to reopen parts of the country as part of the larger White House effort get Americans back to work, the Washington Post reported.

The plan cites three phases: A national communication campaign and community readiness assessment through May 1; increased emergency funding and production of testing kits and personal protective equipment through May 15; and staged reopenings depending on local conditions.

The plan said some mitigation measures would have to remain in effect and communities that would only need “low mitigation” efforts are places where the virus never took hold, the Post said.

The document warned: “Models indicate 30-day shelter in place followed by 180 day lifting of all mitigation results in large rebound curve — some level of mitigation will be needed until vaccines or broad community immunity is achieved for recovering communities.”

Redfield said mitigation steps such as people staying physically separated would also likely have to continue until a vaccine and treatments are available.

“I do think we’re going to have some social distancing that’s going to be a critical part of our strategy as we go forward,” he told CBS “This Morning” in an interview.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey; Editing by Alex Richardson and Steve Orlofsky)