Epidemiologist Says Loosening Social Distancing Rules in California Could Be Possible
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — President Trump is considering a plan that would relax social districting rules in some parts of the country.
In a letter to Governors, he said new testing capabilities will allow experts to rank individual counties based on risk, but there has to be a lot of testing and data tracking before that happens.
President Trump said he wants to see the country back open next month.
"We're going to be talking about dates, we're going to be talking to a lot of professionals, but this country was built on getting it done," he said.
The president said his team will have the capability to identify high, medium and low-risk counties, where different rules on social distancing are needed.
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"We need to get Americans back to work and back to school," said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an epidemiologist with UCLA.
Dr. Klausner said the overwhelming majority of counties in California are seeing very low rates of coronavirus spread.
"There hasn't been really any evidence like we've seen in New York City, where there's been an important cluster or outbreak and rapid increase in cases," he said.
According to the California Department of Public Health, the number of positive cases in California increased by more than a thousand from Monday to Thursday, but Dr. Klausner does not consider this intense transmission. However, he said there's still work to do before social distance rules are relaxed.
"We need to continue to monitor, continue monitoring test numbers, we need to monitor positive tests and we need to monitor disease rates," he said.
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An expert on the president's own coronavirus task force team warns against ambitious timelines for opening areas back up.
"You've got to be realistic and you've got to understand that you don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
It's unclear right now when any new social distancing rules will go into effect.
