Azar: If we wear masks, we can avoid further shutdowns

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Sunday that widespread social distancing and mask usage would eliminate the need for resuming shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“If we wear our masks we can avoid further shutdowns but if we don’t that will be the consequence,” Azar said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“The most important thing we’ve got to do right now is each of us act responsibly as individuals,” he added. “We know this works if we just will do this as individuals.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield made similar comments in mid-July, saying, ““If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really think in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.”

CBS’ Margaret Brennan also questioned Azar about the Trump administration’s push for students to return to in-person schooling in the fall, asking what thresholds, if any, would force schools to close.

Brennan noted the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s “yellow zone” criteria, which applies to a locality with a positivity rate between 5 and 10 percent, and asked if a school with a similar rate should shut down.

“That’s an epidemiological early warning sign, that’s not been defined as a threshold for reopening of any kind,” Azar responded, saying, “we don’t believe that there are uniform thresholds for school reopenings.”

“Each community’s going to have to make the determination about circumstances for reopening,” Azar added. “The presumption should be we get our kids back to school and we figure out how to make that happen.”