Donald Trump says he won’t extend social distancing guidelines

Those guidelines — which were originally supposed to last 15 days and were then extended an additional 30 — encouraged Americans to work from home and avoid restaurants and discretionary travel and advised older Americans and those with serious underlying health conditions to isolate themselves.

Vice President Mike Pence said the guidelines have been incorporated into the new guidance issued by the White House earlier this month that lays out how states can gradually ease restrictions and begin to reopen as the rate of new cases slows.

Edwards, who recently extended Louisiana’s stay-at-home order through May 15, is currently under fire from Republican lawmakers in his state after he extended Louisiana’s stay-at-home order through May 15. As he was in Washington, some GOP legislators were trying to rally support to take the extraordinary step of trying to override the governor’s emergency decision-making about the state’s outbreak.

But Trump commended Edwards on the job he’s done after New Orleans became one of the nation’s coronavirus hot spots. “I just wanted to congratulate you,” Trump said.

The White House on Wednesday was also pointing to the prospect of an experimental drug, Remdesivir, which proved effective against the virus in a major new study run by the National Institutes of Health, shortening the time it takes for patients to recover by four days on average.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said the drug reduced the time it takes patients to recover by 31% — 11 days on average versus 15 days for those just given usual care.

“It’s highly significant,′ said the usually cautious doctor. “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.”

The White House and Trump in particular have been eager to give the country positive news as they work to move past the crisis and rebuild the economy, even as the country’s death tally continues to rise. The U.S. has now recorded more than 58,000 deaths from the virus, surpassing the total number of Americans who were killed in the Vietnam War. More than one million people have now tested positive.

Trump said that number has risen so high in large part because of increased U.S. testing.

“That’s a tremendous amount and the reason is because of testing,” he said.

The U.S. has dramatically increased its testing after a slow and rocky start, but many health experts say the country still must do more — as many as 5 million a day — to safely reopen the economy. Otherwise, they warn, cases will skyrocket as Americans return to work, creating another deadly spike.

Trump has dismissed that recommended number, calling it unnecessary and a “media trap.”

Meanwhile Kushner, who has been helping with the effort to get medical supplies to states that need them, suggested in an interview with “Fox and Friends” that the federal government has accomplished its mission.

“We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this. And I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed. So the federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story,” he said.

The administration, he added, is preparing the country to “get as close back to normal as possible as quickly as possible.”

“I think what you’ll see in May, as the states are reopening now, is May will be a transition month,” he said. “And I think you’ll see by June, a lot of the country should be back to normal and the hope is that … by July the country is really rocking again.”

Fox News Channel will be holding a two-hour “virtual town hall” with Trump on Sunday evening at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

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Republished with permission from the Associated Press.