A pandemic expert is cautioning against President Donald Trump’s suggestion the U.S. could reopen for business soon.

The Baltimore Sun reports Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, says millions could die if non-essential businesses are ordered to resume nationwide amid the coronavirus pandemic. More than 46,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the U.S., with more than 100 deaths in the past 24 hours.

“COVID has been spreading w/ exponential growth in US for some time, and we’re just beginning to get an understanding of how extensively,” Inglesby wrote on Twitter Monday. “Some hospitals have said publicly that within a week they will not have ventilators to treat everyone with COVID anymore.”

“Anyone advising the end of social distancing now, needs to fully understand what the country will look like if we do that. COVID would spread widely, rapidly, terribly, could kill potentially millions in the (year) ahead with huge social and economic impact across the country.”

Trump said last week that, for 15 days, Americans should not gather in groups of more than 10 people, schooling should be at home, older and vulnerable people should stay home, and discretionary travel and social visits should be avoided. Trump said Sunday that the U.S. would make a decision on its next action at the end of the 15-day period next week.

On Monday, Trump said he was leaning towards loosening guidelines within weeks, not months, even as some states, including New York, have issued stay-at-home orders and required non-essential businesses to have 100 percent of its workforce from home.

“We can’t have the cure be worse than the problem,” he told reporters Monday. “We have to open our country because that causes problems that, in my opinion, could be far bigger problems."

Trump also claimed, without evidence, that continued closures and the economic impact could result in more deaths than the spread of the virus itself.

Inglesby, who specializes in pandemics and infectious diseases, said the U.S. needs more testing and faster diagnostics, plus medical supplies like masks and ventilators, before ending social distancing.

“In Asia they’ve slowed the disease by slowing social interaction. Left to its own, this disease spreads from 1 person to about 2.5 people, and then they do the same, and so on. For this disease to stop, we need to make it so that the avg person spreads it to <1 other person," Inglesby tweeted. "These big social distancing measures take time to work. The impact of big interventions in Wuhan China took about 3 wks to start to reverse things. And then everyday after the situation got better. In the US, we’re about 7 to 10 days into this, depending on the state.”

“To drop all these measures now would be to accept that COVID pts will get sick in extraordinary numbers all over the country, far beyond what the US health care system could bear."

Worldwide, there are more than 381,000 positive cases of COVID-19 and 16,500 deaths, including 610 who’ve died of coronavirus in the U.S. Inglesby said the number of infected in the U.S. is likely higher, as not every person is symptomatic due to a shortage of tests.

Chinese authorities said Tuesday they will end a two-month lockdown of most of the Hubei province, where almost no new infections have been found in more than a week. The city of Wuhan, where the outbreak started in late December, will remain locked down until April 8.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that nearly 85 percent of new coronavirus cases are being reported in Europe and the United States. The Associated Press reports Spain has resorted to storing bodies in an ice rink converted into a makeshift morgue, as deaths rise in the country.

In last 24 hrs there've been prominent US voices calling for a stop to social distancing, citing rationale that they're worse than impact of COVID itself. It’s worth looking very closely at that claim, where we are in US COVID epidemic and what happens if we stop. 1/x — Tom Inglesby (@T_Inglesby) March 23, 2020