|
 "We are seeing that in places that are opening, we're not seeing
this spike in cases," Azar said on CNN's "State of the Union"
program. "We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact,
closed."
However, Azar said identifying and reporting new cases takes time. A
critical part of reopening will be surveillance of flu-like symptoms
in the population and other hospital admissions data, as well as
testing of asymptomatic individuals, he said.
"It's still early days," Azar cautioned in an interview with CBS'
"Face the Nation." He said data will take some time to come in from
states that reopened early such as Georgia and Florida.
Nearly all 50 U.S. states have begun to allow some businesses to
reopen and residents to move more freely, but only 14 states have
met the federal government's guidelines for lifting measures aimed
at fighting the pandemic, according to a Reuters analysis.
The top Democrat in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said it
was impossible to know the trajectory of the virus, which has killed
close to 90,000 Americans, without more testing.
"We have no idea the size of this challenge to our country because
we have not sufficiently tested," Pelosi said on CBS' "Face the
Nation."
Legislation passed by the House of Representatives on Friday would
provide for the keys to a successful reopening: testing, tracing and
treatment, she said. Republicans have called the bill dead on
arrival in the Senate.
"We haven't had a plan. Let's go forward in a bipartisan way to have
a plan, a plan to test," she said.
[to top of second column] |
The United States has lagged far behind most other industrialized nations in
coronavirus testing that public health officials deem critical to preventing
further outbreaks.
Azar put the onus on local governments to handle reopening plans, as cooped-up
Americans begin to flock to bars, beaches and parks.
"These are very localized determinations. There should not be a one size fits
all to reopening but reopen we must because it's not health versus the economy.
It's health versus healthy," he said, adding there were serious health
consequences to not reopening.
Asked about images being broadcast from some areas of the country showing people
gathering near bars and congregating close together, Azar said that was the cost
of freedom.
"I think in any individual instance you're going to see people doing things that
are irresponsible. That's part of the freedom that we have here in America," he
said on CNN.
(This story has been refiled to fix typo in first paragraph)
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Daniel Wallis)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
 |
