If Americans continue to follow the government's guidelines to slow the spread of coronavirus, the nation's prognosis may be in a different place by June, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma said Thursday.
"I'm optimistic about watching Americans in everyday life trying to adhere to '30 days to slow the spread,'" Verma said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "That's what's going to make the difference here. We want to reduce the number of people that get sick. We want to reduce the strain on the healthcare system, and watching Americans really try to adhere and to do their parts, neighbors helping neighbors, that's what will make the difference here."
However, the pandemic means changing situations, and the White House Coronavirus Task Force, of which Verma is a member, is making data-driven decisions, she said.
That is "why we put that information out there so the American people can see exactly the type of information that the president is using to make those decisions," Verma said. "But we are hopeful that if everybody can adhere to '30 days to slow the spread,' adhere to those guidelines, that we could be through this and hopefully by June we're in a different place."
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday said Italy may be the most comparable country to the United States in terms of the global outbreak, and Verma agreed that China and South Korea had "very different" and strict approaches to battling the disease.
"We're a free country, and are giving recommendations to the American people and hoping they are going to adhere to those," said Verma. "In terms of what happened in Italy, the strain on the healthcare system, those are the things and lessons we're trying to learn from. We're trying to prepare our healthcare system."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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