April 23, 2020 / PHILIP EWING
More than a dozen states have unveiled formal plans to move from coronavirus disaster response and toward reconstruction, the White House said Thursday — but officials also didn’t rule out the need for more mitigation.
Vice President Mike Pence said that 16 states have released formal plans about progressing out of the crisis. Many are pursuing a “phased approach” county by county, he said, pointing specifically to Missouri, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Idaho.
Pence and President Trump said on Thursday all the countermeasures and precautions to slow the spread of the virus are working. If they keep up, “by early summer we could be in a much better place as a nation,” Pence said.
All the same time, Trump and Pence didn’t rule out the possibility that they might need to extend the federal guidelines for social distancing and other mitigation measures past their current expiration date on May 1.
