Over 1,000 cases of Coronavirus in the USA and probably rising

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Dr. Deborah Birx said she and Fauci remain "concerned" about New York City and the New York metro area and said anyone who was in the region the last few days should self-quarantine for the next 14 days, based on the time they left New York.

"About 56% of all the cases in the United States are coming out of that metro area and 50% of all the new cases are coming out of the metro New York area, and 31% of the people succumbing to this disease," Birx said. "It means, because they are still at the 31% mortality compared to the other regions of the country, that we could have a huge impact if we unite together."

She continued that it "will be very critical that those individuals do self quarantine in their homes over the next 14 days to make sure they don't pass the virus to others based on the time they left New York," she said

Fauci emphasized the same concerns, saying they're now seeing people spread the disease from New York to other parts of the country.

"It's a very serious situation and that suffered terribly through no fault of their own but what we are seeing now is understandably people want to get out of New York," Fauci said. "The idea of self isolating for two weeks will be very important."

As reporters started asking questions, Trump was asked if Easter was a realistic timeline for ending social distancing measures. "I would love to see it come even sooner, but I think that would be a beautiful timeline," Trump said.

When Fauci was asked a similar question, if 19 days from now is a realistic timeline, Fauci said it was a "flexible situation" and pointed to the importance of studying areas of the country where the outbreak isn't obvious.

"That's very flexible. We just had a conversation with the president in the Oval Office talking about -- you can look at a date but you have to be very flexible on it, on a literal day-to-day basis, Fauci said.

President Trump kept up his push to have America "open for business very soon" on a Fox News "virtual town hall" Tuesday afternoon from the White House Rose Garden.

He said he would "love to have the country opened up by Easter" which is April 12.
"It's such an important day for other reasons, but I will make it an important day for this: I would love to have the country opened up, and they are just raring to go, by Easter."

"We lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off," Trump said, echoing what he said at his Monday night White House briefing. "We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We didn't call up the automobile companies and say, ‘Stop making cars. We don't want any cars anymore.’ We have to get back to work."

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CDC issues travel advisory for New York, New Jersey, Connecticut

By Veronica Stracqualursi, Jason Hoffman and Kelly Mena, CNN

Updated 9:52 PM ET, Sat March 28, 2020

(CNN)The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel advisory urging people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to "refrain from non-essential domestic travel" for the next two weeks.
President Donald Trump had asked the CDC on Saturday to issue the advisory after he had floated the idea of a quarantine earlier in the day.
The CDC said this advisory does not apply to employees of critical infrastructure industries, including but not limited to trucking, public health professionals, financial services, and food supply. These employees of critical infrastructure, as defined by the United States Department of Homeland Security and have a special responsibility to maintain normal work schedules.
The move comes, he said on Twitter, after consulting with the governors of the three states, who will administer the plan "in consultation with the Federal Government." The CDC said that the governors of the states would have "full discretion" on how to implement the advisory.

Trump said in his tweet that a quarantine would "not be necessary."
Trump had said earlier in the day that he was considering a short-term quarantine of "hot spots" in parts of the tri-state area -- New York, New Jersey and Connecticut -- where cases of coronavirus continue to rise.
"We're thinking about certain things. Some people would like to see New York quarantined because it's a hotspot. ... We might not have to do it, but there's a possibility that sometime today we'll do a quarantine, short-term, two weeks on New York. Probably New Jersey, certain parts of Connecticut," he told reporters as he departed the White House for Norfolk Naval Station to send off a Navy hospital ship to New York.
Trump's suggestion comes after the United States this week became the epicenter of the global pandemic, with more than 120,000 reported Covid-19 cases across the country, and more than 52,000 of them in New York state alone. Officials forecast that the apex of the pandemic there is still 14 to 21 days away. But overwhelmed hospitals, in New York as well as across the US, working to treat coronavirus patients and curb the spread of the virus are facing a shortage of supplies and ventilators, a key piece of equipment.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that he spoke with Trump on Saturday morning, but that the two had not discussed a quarantine.
"I don't even know what that means. I don't know how that could be legally enforceable," the Democratic governor said during in a news conference in Albany. "And from a medical point view, I don't know what you would be accomplishing."
"But I can tell you, I don't even like the sound of it," he added.
Later Saturday, Cuomo told CNN's Ana Cabrera that the quarantine sounded more like a lockdown for the New York area, calling a potential move by the federal government "mayhem."
"It would be chaos and mayhem," Cuomo said. "It's totally opposite everything he's been saying. I don't think it is plausible. I don't think it is legal."
Trump, however, earlier said that possible quarantine would be "enforceable" and "restrict travel" from those parts of the tri-state area. He also said any quarantine wouldn't affect truckers from outside the New York area.
"Restrict travel, because they're having problems down in Florida, a lot of New Yorkers going down. We don't want that," he said.
Florida's governor had mandated a 14-day self-quarantine or isolation period for travelers coming to Florida from airports in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. According to media reports, wealthy New Yorkers have fled Manhattan for vacation homes in the Hamptons, the Catskills, the Poconos, Florida and Connecticut......

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Washington (CNN)The nation's top infectious disease expert said Sunday that based on models, the United States could eventually see 100,000 or more deaths from the novel coronavirus, which has already claimed more than 2,000 American lives as cases surge across the US.
"Whenever the models come in, they give a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario. Generally, the reality is somewhere in the middle. I've never seen a model of the diseases that I've dealt with where the worst case actually came out. They always overshoot," Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House's coronavirus task force, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
"I mean, looking at what we're seeing now, you know, I would say between 100 and 200,000 (deaths). But I don't want to be held to that," he said, adding that the US is going to have "millions of cases."
The comments come as the number of reported coronavirus deaths doubled to more than 2,000 nationwide in two days. The US has the most confirmed cases worldwide, with more than 121,000 as of Saturday morning.

During a Sunday evening news conference, President Donald Trump said that, based on models that the coronavirus outbreak could bring 100,000-200,000 deaths in the US, his administration would "have done a good job."