Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said asymptomatic spread at large gatherings is hurting the ability to reopen schools across the country and asked the public to follow proper social distancing guidelines to open the “pathway forward.”
“What does social distancing mean? It means that we’re asking every citizen to not have large gatherings in their backyards until we have an effective vaccine,” Birx told reporters in Missouri during a briefing on Tuesday. “We know there’s amazing asymptomatic spread.”
Birx continued, “We all want to believe our family members, our neighbors couldn’t possibly have COVID. I can tell you across the United states they do,” citing “parties in Texas where 150 out of 150 people were infected, an outdoor party.”
“If we decrease community spread in this common sense pathway forward, we can have the schools open, we can have the universities and colleges open, we can have the sports teams, but we all have to do our part to get these cases down, no matter where you live in the United States,” she added.
