Reopening the country after its shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic will be a slow process, and the Trump administration does expect there will be setbacks in some places, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Friday.
"You are not flipping on a light switch," Adams said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "You are slowly going back to work. You are slowly going back to movie theaters and restaurants with social distancing."
And while there will likely be setbacks, "one of the criteria is making sure you have the ability to quickly detect these setbacks and respond to them so one case doesn't become a thousand cases, and so we can do contact tracing and shut things down if we need to," he added.
Adams said that everywhere won't open at once.
"Some places aren't going to open for two weeks. For four weeks. For six weeks, and that's okay," said Adams. "But we want people to be thinking now about how we can be in the best position possible when the time comes to open because if we don't think about it now, we won't be ready in two weeks or four weeks to actually do it."
President Donald Trump Thursday presented a three-phase plan for reopening the country that will allow states with declining infections and strong testing to begin a three-phase, gradual reopening of businesses and schools.
"We are not going to tell these states they are open," said Adams."It's got to be at a comfort level with the governors, with their healthcare systems and public health systems and people of their state," said Adams. "Just to be honest with you. I don't want to say a state is ready, I don't want to put them on the spot and I don't want to say a number of states are ready."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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