WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. authorities are not yet seeing spikes in coronavirus cases in places that are reopening but it was still too early to determine such trends, health secretary Alex Azar said on Sunday.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar speaks during a news briefing on the administration’s response to the coronavirus at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 15, 2020. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
“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