Dr. Siegel: We need rapid, mass testing, tracing and isolation to have a successful reopening

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Dr. Siegel: We need testing, tracing and isolation for plan to reopen economy to really work

The White House unveils their guidelines to reopen the country; Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel reacts.

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America needs coronavirus testing, tracing, and isolation for the plan to reopen the nation's economy to really work, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel said Friday.

Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade, Siegel warned that while the country still needs to be cautious and smart about the way it operates going forward, rapid testing is still paramount for a return to some sense of normalcy.

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During the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing Thursday night, PresidentTrump unveiled a set of guidelines titled "Opening up America Again" as he declared that the U.S. is moving on to its next stage in the fight against the virus. He also announced a bipartisan council of lawmakers dedicated to restarting the economy.

"We can begin the next front in our war, which we are calling 'Opening Up America Again,'" he told reporters. "To preserve the health of Americans, we must preserve the health of our economy."

"We are not opening all at once, but one careful step at a time," Trump said, adding that the guidelines were "based on hard verifiable data."

President Donald Trump listens as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

"Some states will be able to open up sooner than others," he added.

Later Thursday night, NAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci told "The Ingraham Angle" host Laura Ingraham that while America will not completely resume normal life without a vaccine, the country could return to "a significant degree of normality" before then.

"[The White House plan] is a gradual process [that] takes into account that we have a heterogeneous dynamic of outbreaks throughout the country," he said. "California is really different than New Orleans. It is really different than New York or Detroit ... places like Arkansas and New Mexico are very different. So what this plan does [is], it creates a baseline of a starting point, which we call the gating, where you have to have a certain degree of indication that the outbreak is decreasing over a period of time."

"Before Phase 1, it's gauging which is -- they look to see if 14 days have gone by and you are not showing any surge up in cases," Dr. Siegel explained. "We are actually starting to see that in many areas that we were worried about: Florida, Texas, even on the West Coast in San Francisco. So, we are seeing this already."

"And, if there [are] 14 days of it, you can then go to Phase 1 where restaurants reopen, sporting events reopen, elective surgeries start again, which we really need badly," he continued.

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"So, this is a Phase 1 and we are probably two weeks away from it in many places. But, I want to add a word of caution here: We need testing, tracing and isolating sick people to really get this to work. We need to ramp up the testing," Siegel urged.

"Because we know we have 675,000 cases in the United States, but we probably have more than a million or two million if you count all of those asymptomatic spreaders," he added. "So, we need to know what's really going on in the region, and to do that we need the rapid testing I have been talking about in place. That will really make this work."