Coronavirus taskforce members sound cautious note as they urge New Yorkers who have left city to self-quarantine

Donald Trump is aiming to reopen “large sections of the country” by Easter, he told reporters on Tuesday, as officials advised anyone who has recently left New York to self-quarantine for two weeks.

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The US president has put himself on collision course with his own health experts by floating a deadline for firing up the economy, claiming without evidence that the current shutdown would cause more deaths than the coronavirus itself.

“I hope we can do this by Easter,” Trump told reporters at an unusually brisk White House briefing. “I think that would be a great thing for our country.”

Asked if that timeline – 12 April – was realistic, he replied: “We’re going to look at it. We’ll only do it if it’s good and maybe we do sections of the country, we do large sections of the country.”

The president, known for his love of media spectacle, said he picked Easter because “I just thought it was a beautiful time, a beautiful timeline, it’s a great day.”

He added: “It was based on a certain level of weeks from the time we started. And it happened – actually, we were thinking sooner. I’d love to see it come even sooner.”

He noted there were “large sections of our country that are doing very well” with only “small numbers” of coronavirus infections, pointing to the farm belt and swaths of Texas. “We begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

Trump trailed his Easter deadline, which starkly contrasts with measures in the UK, India and other countries, in an earlier virtual town hall on Fox News. In another interview on the network, he said: “You’ll have packed churches all over our country. I think it’ll be a beautiful time.”

The notion provoked widespread criticism. Rabbi Jack Moline, president of Interfaith Alliance, said: “The president’s insistence on an arbitrary deadline – symbolic as it may be – will only put further lives at risk. The suggestion that the danger of this pandemic will pass by Easter is not borne out by scientific evidence.”

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He added: “The necessary changes to economic, social, and religious practices are painful for many. But every human being – every parent, grandparent, neighbor, and friend – has value. Prioritising financial gain over human life violates the principles of all religious traditions and carries echoes of some of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.”

During the White House briefing, the president promised he would be “very much” guided by the taskforce members Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx and other experts. Fauci, whose absence from Monday’s briefing alarmed some viewers, was back on the podium and struck a note of caution.

“You can look at a date but you’ve got to be very flexible on a literally day-by-day and week-by-week basis,” he said. “You need to evaluate the feasibility of what you’re trying to do.”

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Fauci added: “When you look at the country, obviously no one is going to want to tone down things when you see what’s going on in a place like New York city, that’s just good public health practice and common sense. But the country is a big country.”

Further testing could provide information about how some areas of the country differ from others, Fauci said. “You may not want to treat it as one force for the entire country but look at flexibility in different areas. It’s going to be looking at the data.”

Birx, the White House response coordinator, meanwhile, said the taskforce remained “deeply concerned” about New York and the surrounding area, stating about 56% of all the cases in the US were coming out of the New York metro area.

She added: “To everyone who has left New York over the last few days, because of the … number of cases, you may have been exposed before you left New York.

“Everybody who was in New York should be self-quarantining for the next 14 days to ensure that the virus doesn’t spread to others, no matter where they have gone, whether it’s Florida, North Carolina, or out to far reaches of Long Island.”

There are now more than 52,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US and a death toll of 677. People can carry the virus without showing symptoms.