Even as the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. continues to swell, Trump has suggested ways for swaths of the country to re-open, county by county, following two weeks of social distancing measures that have brought the U.S. economy to a standstill. But neither the president nor leading officials involved in the pandemic response have explained in detail the kind of testing system necessary to make their latest proposal happen — or when it will be fully operational.

Trump floated re-opening the country by Easter earlier this week at a Fox News town hall, saying he'd like to have the "country opened up and just raring to go" by the April 12 holiday. But since then White House officials have appeared to back away from that date as deadline.

In an interview on CNBC Friday morning, Pence called Trump’s Easter goal “aspirational” and stressed that the administration will rely on data to determine when restrictions can be relaxed.

“In the days ahead, we're going to be giving guidance specifically to different regions of the country about how, as the president says, we might be able to open up the country and get America back to work just as soon as we responsibly can,” he said.

On Thursday, Trump previewed a plan to “classify counties with respect to continued risks posed” by the coronavirus. In a letter sent to the nation’s governors, the president wrote that the administration is looking to use "robust surveillance testing" to determine which parts of the country can lift restrictions.

The push would theoretically allow areas with relatively few cases of Covid-19, the illness caused by the unique coronavirus, to begin returning to normal, even as the virus ravages states like New York, which now has more than 44,000 cases and more than 500 deaths.

“There's a possibility I'll do it in quadrants, in pieces,” Trump said on Fox News Thursday night, when asked about his plans to get the country “back to work.”

Trump later posited that more relaxed social distancing guidelines, which call for Americans to stop congregating in groups of more than 10, could begin in the Farm Belt.

“You’ll take certain states that aren't badly impacted where they have almost none or they have just a little bit” of an outbreak, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “You take a look at some of these great states like Iowa, you take a look at Idaho and you take a look at Nebraska."

New York, which has become the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., “is a bigger deal,” Trump acknowledged Thursday night.

On Saturday, Trump will travel to Norfolk, Va., to see a a Navy hospital ship that will deploy to New York City to help alleviate the crowds of coronavirus patients filling hospital.

“It’s a very bad situation, we haven't seen anything like it,” he said of New York. “But the end result is we've got to get back to work and I think we can start by opening up certain parts of the country, the farm belt, certain parts of the Midwest, other places.”

He also cited Texas as an example of a state using a patchwork of local restrictions. Gov. Greg Abbott has resisted issuing a statewide shelter-in-place directive in favor of allowing local governments to make such orders.

“I think we can open up sections, quadrants, and then just keep them going until the whole country is opened up. But we have to open up — the people want to get back to work,” Trump argued.

His push to roll back restrictions on Americans' activities — buoyed by calls from some conservatives and business leaders — came amid a week of grim milestones. The U.S. saw two of its deadliest days yet in its battle against Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, as the death toll topped 1,000 and the U.S. for the first time became the global leader in the number of reported cases.

And as Congress scrambles to cross the finish line on a $2 trillion rescue package for affected industries and workers, the Department of Labor reported Thursday that unemployment claims had soared to record highs.

Trump maintained on Fox News that the economy would make a full rebound, telling Hannity that “the sooner we go back, the better the lift that we are going to get.”