Coronavirus Live Updates: As Social Curbs Slow Spread, Pressure Grows to Ease Them

The two European countries where the virus has claimed the most lives, Italy and Spain, both announced the first, tentative steps to ease restrictions on some nonessential employees, allowing them to return to work. But strict, stay-at-home rules will remain in effect for the overwhelming majority of people.

With more than 550,000 detected cases and 22,000 deaths, the United States is the epicenter of the global outbreak. But as the number of new infections and hospitalizations in New York and other hard hit parts of America have stabilized in recent days, it has also become the center of the debate over when and how to reopen the economy.

President Trump, who had previously said he hoped that Easter would be a turning point in the crisis, has more recently signaled his desire to get things moving again by the end of the month.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said that turning the economy back on would not be like flipping a switch, but rather a case of “rolling re-entry,” starting with parts of the country less impacted by the virus.

“We are hoping that, at the end of the month, we could look around and say, OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on,” he said on Sunday on CNN.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/us/coronavirus-updates-usa.html