Surgeon General Jerome Adams says there is 'light at the end of the tunnel' if Americans do the right thing and stay home until the end of April
Surgeon General Jerome Adams has said there was 'light at the end of the tunnel' but that America will never return to the same type of 'normal' after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Adams said that data suggests parts of the country like New York and New Jersey are flattening their curve and that data out of Italy and Spain shows they are coming down from theirs.
If Americans keep following social distancing rules, the country will follow suit but recovery depends entirely on people staying at home, he said.
It was a less sinister tone than over the weekend, when Adams said this coming week would be 'this generation's 9/11 or Pearl Harbor' and the 'saddest of many's lives.'
More than 11,000 Americans have died from the virus and there are more than 350,000 infections with the apex still an estimated nine days away.
Dr. Adams said on Tuesday that while he still believes it will be a 'tough week', the data is optimistic.
Dr. Jerome Adams said on Tuesday morning that there was 'light at the end of the tunnel' but only if Americans stayed home for the rest of April
The @Surgeon_General Dr. Jerome Adams tells our @GStephanopoulos: “There is a light at the end of the this tunnel.” gma.abc/34gbjuR
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'This is going to be an incredibly sad and hard week but we've had tough times in this country before.
'We always come out of it stronger. The good news is when you look at Italy and Spain, they're seeing cases come down.
'The American people have the power to change the trajectory of this pandemic if we come together,' he said.
He repeated Dr. Anthony Fauci's suggestion that the US will never return to the 'normal' it knew before the pandemic swept the nation, but that in some ways, life could resume at the end of April.
'We know that normal is going to be a different normal, whenever we do reopen.
'We will be able to get back to some normalcy. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, if we keep doing the right thing for the rest of this month, we can start to slowly reopen in some places,' he said, adding he felt 'a lot more optimistic'.
'I'm seeing mitigation work. I'm so impressed,' he said.
Dr. Adams said that while early projections suggested the US could see as many 100,000 deaths, the reality may be far fewer.
'Initially we were looking at an array of projections based on best guesses. Now, we have data.
'The facts tell us China and South Korea are starting to reopen, Italy and Spain are on the down slopes, Washington and California are flattening their curves.
'The most important thing is to really focus on 30 days to slow the spread.
'We need you to continue doing your part. Over 90 percent of the country is actually doing the right thing right now,' he said.
Dr. Adams said cell phone data showed that the majority of Americans were staying home.
He resisted suggesting a 50-state lockdown order and said people who were following the rules deserved more credit.
'I actually think there's a lot of talk about [a national quarantine] but not enough about the fact that cell phone data that's publicly available shows most people are doing the right thing and staying home.
The number of deaths in the US continues to rise but is expected to hit its peak on April 16, according to new data
The number of new cases across the US per day continues to go up. There were 30,000 on Monday
A breakdown of the cases in the US and where the majority are. The new hotspots are expected to be Illinois and Louisiana
'People are making the right choice. This is what it comes down to. It's a the community level,' he said.
In a different interview with Today, Dr. Adams said the virus had 'humbled' many of the decision-makers in government who were not prepared for it.
'Many people at all levels just did not expect something like this to happen at this magnitude.
'So there are many lessons learned. This virus has humbled many of us. We will backtrack and try to figure out how to improve,' he said, adding that he believes the White House was making preparations for the virus for longer than it has been given credit for.
'There were preparations going on the entire time. There was work going on behind the scenes.
'This virus has humbled many of us and what I'm focused on now is helping the American people work out what to do now moving forward. We're seeing many places across the country level out the hospitalizations, ICU, their death rates. We know mitigation works,' he said.
Dr. Adams resisted confirming whether or not New York has hit its peak - as data suggests - and says he does not want to give anyone false hope.
'I don't want to say they have hit their peak yet because sometimes places will come down for a little bit and come back up again.
'People called me an alarmist when I told places a few weeks ago to pull out of elective surgeries, when I was telling people don't take the N95 medical masks because they aren't helpful for the general public to prevent them from getting coronavirus but they are needed for healthcare workers.
'I have told people this was coming and so now it's important for everyone to do their part and lower demand so we can move supplies to where they're needed to make sure my colleagues, my health care workers, my friends are getting what they need to be able to protect themselves,' he said.
Dr. Adams said that while he is urging people to stay at home at all costs, in Wisconsin, where there is an election, anyone who goes out to vote should wear a mask or a face covering.
'If you can vote remotely, I'm not familiar with what other options they have available, if you can't, maintain 6ft of distance between you and the next person and please consider wearing a cloth facial covering you can make one out of household items for just a few minutes, to protect our neighbors.
'If you go out in Wisconsin to vote, please wear one to protect your neighbor. We are all in this together,' he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, pictured on Monday night at a White House briefing with Vice President Mike Pence, said the US would never return to the 'normal' it knew
A hospital worker removes the body of a dead coronavirus patient from Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn on Monday
On Monday night, Dr. Anthony Fauci told Americans to brace for the reality that life as they knew it will never return.
''If "back to normal" means acting like there never was a coronavirus problem, I don't think that's going to happen until we do have a situation where you can completely protect the population [with a vaccine].
'We will go back gradually to the point [where] we can function as a society. You're absolutely right.
'If you want to get to pre-coronavirus, that might not ever happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there,' he said.
A vaccine is still months away, but there are scores of therapies in treatments that are currently being tested and studied to determine their effectiveness.
President Donald Trump then stepped back to the podium to offer his own insights on the question, declaring that he has 'total confidence' in companies working on vaccines.
He also suggested that the US economy will come back even stronger than it was before, thanks to the 'tremendous stimulus we are giving'.
Asked whether federal social distancing guidelines will be lifted on April 30 as planned, Trump declined to comment.
But he did say that those restrictions have 'exceeded expectations' for slowing the spread of COVID-19 in eight states.
New York City digs trenches to temporarily bury its coronavirus dead on Hart Island which was used to dispose of Spanish Flu victims - as 437 die in a day in the city bringing death toll to 3,485
Coronavirus dead across New York could be temporarily buried on Hart Island as morgues across the city start to overflow.
America's coronavirus epicenter of New York is grappling with how to deal with the dead as the disease has brought the city to its knees.
Undertakers are so overcrowded that a city official raised the possibility yesterday of carrying out temporary burials in a public park.
A work site is seen on Hart Island yesterday as it is to be used as a temporary burial site for coronavirus victims. The island is already used as a common grave site
A cross made of stones pictured (above) amid stones marking mass graves on Hart Island, the former location of a prison and hospital
As the Big Apple's death toll from COVID-19 soared to 3,485 on Monday, images of bodies covered in sheets being transported on stretchers by health workers in protective suits are a common sight outside hospitals.
The trucks are storing bodies that are accumulating too quickly for funeral directors to pick them up directly from hospitals.
One suggestion was that the former Cold War missile site at Hart Island on Long Island Sound, which was also used as a Civil War prison camp and a burial site during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, would be used for temporary graves.
Mark Levine, a Manhattan council representative, tweeted: 'Trenches will be dug for 10 caskets in a line. It will be done in a dignified, orderly and temporary manner. But it will be tough for NYers to take.'
The comments caused quite a stir in America's most populous city, which has already been transformed by the pandemic, including in Central Park where a field hospital is tending to virus patients.
Levine later updated his remarks by saying he understood any temporary burials would be carried out on Hart Island rather than public parks.
He added: 'I have spoken to many folks in City gov't today, and received unequivocal assurance that there will be *no* burials in NYC Parks. All have stated clearly that if temporary interment should be needed it will be done on Hart Island.'
The mayor's spokeswoman, Freddi Goldstein, stressed that the city government was not considering using local parks as cemeteries.
But she added that Hart Island, where around one million New Yorkers are already buried in mass graves, may be used 'for temporary burials, if the need grows'.
Interments of coronavirus fatalities on the island may already have taken place.
Melinda Hunt, the founder of the Hart Island Project, said drone video footage shot last week appears to show burials of COVID-19 patients who passed away.
She told CBS New York: 'Within an hour they've buried 25 bodies, so it's a very efficient system of burials.
'Hart Island has been used during the 1918 flu epidemic. Thousands of New Yorkers were buried there, diphtheria, tuberculosis.'
The video is narrated by a Rikers Island inmate who previously was part of the burial detail.
The narrator said during the footage: 'What did this person do in life that they ultimately wound up here alone? All we know is a name and a date of death.'
Hart Island, off the Bronx's east shore, could serve as a site for temporary interment, according to an OCME planning document for dealing with a surge of deaths from a pandemic.
The island is home to the city's potter's field, a cemetery for people with no next of kin or whose families cannot arrange funerals.
In normal times inmates from city jails each week bury some 25 New Yorkers there.
But the number of burials on Hart jumped in the last week of March to 72, according to Jason Kersten, a spokesman at the Department of Correction, which oversees the island.
Over the last 160 years Hart Island has been a Union Civil War prisoner-of-war camp, a psychiatric institution, tuberculosis sanatorium and a potter's field burial site.
Since 1861 more than a million people have been buried there, with trucks still arriving at the site twice a week from morgues across New York.
One there inmates from Rikers Island are paid 50c an hour to act as pallbearers and bury the dead.
The dead are interred in trenches, with babies placed in coffins, which are stacked in groups of 1,000, measuring five coffins deep and usually in 20 rows.
Adults are placed in larger pine boxes arranged according to size and stacked in sections of 150, measuring three coffins deep in two rows.
Since the first decade of the 21st century there are fewer than 1,500 burials a year at Hart Island.
Hunt, who has documented Hart Island, added that help would be needed from the military when it came time to reunite families with the deceased.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams says there is 'light at the end of the tunnel' if Americans do the right thing and stay home until the end of April
![Surgeon General Jerome Adams says there is 'light at the end of the tunnel' if Americans do the right thing and stay home until the end of April]()
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