The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said he recommended a lockdown in February for some states as a way to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Robert Redfield told NBC's Savannah Guthrie on Monday that urgings from the CDC and National Institute of Health went unanswered during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The federal government and individual states didn't start promoting social distancing until early March.
"As we got into March, we recognized the different areas that mitigation was now important," Redfield said during the NBC interview. "CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas."
The comments from Redfield come a day after Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading infectious disease expert who works on the coronavirus task force, told CNN that more lives could've been saved if lockdowns were put in place earlier.
Redfield, however, suggested a lockdown wasn't necessary at that time since the pandemic hadn't fully taken effect around the country.
"If you look back, in January and February, the cases we had in this country were all related to China travel," Redfield said. "It wasn’t until February 28 when we saw our first community transmission where we said, ‘wait a minute, where is this coming from?'"
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