Recently, President Donald Trump announced that the period of social distancing would continue until the end of April to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Now, Trump is expected to announce the new guidelines for the extended social distancing period.
The White House will issue a new set of social distancing guidelines in efforts to curb the pandemic in the United States. This follows after Trump was presented by models predicting hundreds of thousands of deaths from the coronavirus as well as polls showing support for social distancing especially in states like New York where the cases are high. The findings suggested an extended lockdown period would be necessary to properly keep the situation under control.
Despite the decision pushing through, there are some advisers that opposed the idea and even questioned the models that were presented to him by the health experts to convince him the extension is necessary. Trump ultimately moved forward with the extension, explaining that it is necessary to prevent more fatalities from the coronavirus. The President and the White House coronavirus task force will then present the new guidelines with models to back up their decision in putting together the new guidelines for the extended period.
According to Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the health experts in the task force, “We’ll go through all the graphs and all of the information that we took to President for the decision.”
Dr. Birx then went on to explain that according to the data they have collated, even in the situation that the country follows the social distancing guidelines to the letter, around 100,000 to 200,000 can still die from the coronavirus. Nevertheless, this was met with skepticism, some questioning the accuracy of the models presented.
In terms of healthcare throughout the country, the Trump administration has ultimately decided against the reopening of Obamacare, choosing to relaunch under a new name. They decided on relaunching the federal enrollment site Healthcare.gov. But White House officials have revealed that the administration is not relaunching the site for a special enrollment period and instead, going through other options before ultimately making the decision.