U.S. Surgeon General on the administration's plan to reopen America
Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams breaks down the White House guidelines to reopen the country on 'Fox & Friends.'
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While the government expects some setbacks in its plan to reopen the nation's economy, contact tracing is necessary to respond to any resurgence in coronavirus cases, United States Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Friday.
Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade, Adams said that the guidelines the administration released at Thursday's White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing are "deliberative," "measured," and based on a "data-driven approach to letting people all across the country know how they can reopen safely."
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He assured the "Friends" hosts that in the disaster response cycle, there is always an effort to plan for and think toward the future.
"There is criteria [in the guidelines] that people need to make sure they can satisfy before they even start to think about reopening. And then, once they meet those initial criteria, there are phases you progress through so you are not just flipping on a light switch," Adams explained.
"You are slowly starting to go back to work. You are slowly starting to go back to movie theaters and restaurants with social distancing," he continued.
"And, one of the things I want the American people to know is that we do expect that there will be setbacks in some places. But, one of the criteria is making sure you have the ability to quickly detect these setbacks and respond to them so that one case doesn't become a thousand cases," Adams stated.
"So, we can do contact tracing and then shut things down if we need to in the places we need to," he remarked.
In accordance with President Trump, governors across the country are rolling out their own plans to reopen the economy.
The president declared Thursday that the U.S. was moving on to its next stage in the fight against the virus and also announced a bipartisan council of lawmakers dedicated to restarting the economy.
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"We can begin the next front in our war, which we are calling 'Opening Up America Again,'" Trump said during the daily press briefing. "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," he told reporters, adding that the guidelines were "based on hard verifiable data."
Fox News' Tyler Olson, Andrew O'Reilly, Bradford Betz, Nick Givas, and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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