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Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam accused protesters of being "selfish" on Tuesday, for challenging the novel coronavirus lockdown restrictions that have been instituted across the country.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Northam, a Democrat, said the protests are endangering frontline healthcare workers and putting lives at risk.

“What they're doing at the end of the day — which I think is so selfish — they're putting our health care providers, those that are in the trenches trying to save lives every day, they're putting them at risk, and that's wrong," he said. "I would ask them to think about that.”

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Northam, a physician, added that he shares the desire to reopen state commerce but doesn't need to be pressured by protesters about major policy decisions.

“I'm just as anxious as anybody else to open up our economy, but we need to do it safely,” Northam said earlier in the interview. “We don't need protesters to encourage me and anybody else to ease these restrictions. And what these protesters are doing -- they are not following the guidelines of social distancing."

Virginia became one of several states to launch demonstrations against local lawmakers on Thursday. Other states experiencing backlash include Ohio, California, Michigan, New Jersey, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York and Texas.

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As of Wednesday, there were over 835,000 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States and nearly 46,000 deaths.

Fox News' Andrew O'Reilly and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report