Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, while responding to a New York Times report claiming the Trump administration could have acted sooner to stem the rapid growth of the coronavirus in the United States, pointed out that cases in January and February were all related to China travel, not with person-to-person transfer of the virus.
"I think right now our job is to get through this outbreak and get our country back to work," Redfield told NBC "Today" anchor Savannah Guthrie. "It was 14 cases throughout the country. (The) CDC evaluated 800 contacts of those individuals and only identified two individuals that had been infected, both spouses. It wasn't until February 28 when we saw our first community transmission where we said, wait a minute, where is this coming from."
The initial response, he added, was one of containment, but when the two community cases were revealed, broader mitigation steps were taken.
"Seattle opened up mitigation, (and the) CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York, and to Florida recommending they expand mitigation in those areas," he said.
Meanwhile, the United States is "nearing the peak" as far as coronavirus infections, but reopening the country from social distancing restrictions is something that must be examined by a "county-by-county" basis, and must be data-driven, he told Guthrie.
On Fox News' "Fox and Friends," Redfield said the keys to reopen the country and keeping it open are the "fundamentals of public health," including "early and aggressive case recognition, isolation and contact tracing so we can get back in a containment mode."
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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