NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A week after millions of Americans began taking shelter at home from the coronavirus, states warned on Tuesday against easing restrictions too soon even though the clampdown is devastating the U.S. economy.
President Donald Trump said on Monday he was considering how to restart business life when a 15-day shutdown ends next week, even as the highly contagious virus spreads rapidly and poorly equipped hospitals struggle with a wave of deadly cases.
A Republican, Trump is seeking to win re-election in November on a promise of economic growth.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat whose state of New York has become the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak with 25,665 cases, strongly opposed allowing people to travel, socialize and get back to workplaces too quickly.
“If you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest. No American is going to say accelerate the economy at the cost of human life,” he said at a convention center in Manhattan that is being repurposed to fit beds for coronavirus patients.
Cuomo said the projected need for hospital beds in New York at the peak of the outbreak has jumped to 140,000, compared with the 53,000 that are available and that the apex of the outbreak could still be 14-21 days away
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, told CNN on Tuesday: “We don’t think that we’re going to be in any way ready to be out of this in five or six days or so, or whenever this 15 days is up from the time that they started this imaginary clock.”
More than 42,000 people in the United States have contracted COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, and at least 620 have died. The World Health Organization on Tuesday warned that the United States has the potential to b