After urging the media to stop the finger-pointing and join the fight to curb the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jermone Adams said Washington, D.C., or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not stop this alone.
It comes down to the communities and the American people.
"We are at a critical inflection point, in this country, where we need to flatten the curve," Dr. Adams told Fox News' "Justice with Judge Jeanine." "We have a choice — do we want to look more like South Korea with a lower mortality rate, or do we want to look more like Italy?"
South Korea was a country with a high rate of coronavirus testing and a lower death rate, while Italy has overtaken China as the epicenter for the coronavirus the World Health Organization has ruled a global pandemic.
"And if we want to look more like South Korea, at the end of this, then we need everyone to understand, we're not going to solve this problem from Washington, D.C. — we are not going to solve it from CDC in Atlanta," Adams said.
"It will be solved at the community level and solved by people coming together."
Adams did admit the CDC is not set up to test every American for the coronavirus, like a smaller country like South Korea could, but the U.S. can rely on its quality healthcare, doctors, and world class health experts.
"What people need to understand, in our country, the CDC was never designed to be able to provide testing for hundreds of millions of people," Adams said.
"We always knew that if we were going to be in this situation, we would have to rely on the ingenuity, and the innovation, and the talent of in the private sector."
Adams, who has expressed some concern for the testing limitations, is now far more optimistic in the direction the U.S. is headed.
"I feel a lot better about the direction we're going into," he said. "It's not mission accomplished. But know that we're leaning into this."