President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he would be prolonging the federal government’s social distancing guidelines to April 30 as a precautionary measure against the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The better you do, the faster this whole nightmare will end,” Trump said during a town hall. “Therefore, we will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread.”
There would be a “very important statement” on the new guidelines on Tuesday, according to the President.
“We can expect that by June 1, we will be well on our way to recovery, we think, by June 1,” he added.
Trump’s decision is a notable departure from his previous push to have the guidelines end by Easter (aka April 12) to boost the economy, which took a major hit from the coronavirus.
Medical experts and state lawmakers warned that such a deadline was unrealistic given how that the outbreak in the U.S. continues to escalate, and even some White House officials reportedly tried to discourage Trump from setting hard limits on social distancing.
