'Most' of US won’t be resuming normal life by May 1

QUERETARO, Mexico

The U.S. surgeon general said on Friday that “most of the country” will not open up by May 1, as the coronavirus cases and deaths continue to climb.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said that parts of the country may resume normal life by May 1, but most of the U.S. would continue to follow coronavirus lockdown guidelines.

“We know that the more we participate in social distancing, the flatter the curve is and the quicker we can get to the other side,” Adams said in an interview with Fox News.

President Donald Trump had originally hoped to reopen the country “by Easter.” At the end of March, he moved back the social distancing guidelines to April 30.

It now seems that the government will need to push back the date again. However, Adams said that there are parts of the country that might be ready to reopen on May 1.

“That’s how we’ll open the country – place by place, bit by bit, based on the data,” he said in the live interview.

The surgeon general said part of the “data” will consist of surveillance testing. He said that the government hopes to test one out of every 100 or 50 people to decide whether or not a city is ready to reopen.

The U.S. has more than 475,000 coronavirus cases with about 17,000 deaths. Worldwide the number of coronavirus cases has reached more than 1,650,000.