Coronavirus Live Updates: As Health Experts Urge Caution, Trump Eyes the Calendar

The president did issue nonbinding guidelines urging a pause in daily life through the end of the month. And if he were to issue new guidance outlining a path toward reopening, many states would probably follow or feel pressure from businesses and constituents to ease restrictions.

But the central question is how long it will be until the country is fully back up and running. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, the hardest-hit state, said any easing of restrictions would require widespread testing to cover millions of workers first, and Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which has created a model for Covid-19 deaths, told CNN that the latest data suggested caution was the right course.

He predicted that a premature lifting of social distancing restrictions — which Mr. Trump seems eager to approve, perhaps by May 1 — could cause infections and deaths to surge.

“If we were to stop at the national level May 1,” Dr. Murray said, “we’re seeing a return to almost where we are now sometime in July.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html