Surgeon general asks holdout states to ‘give us a week’ of coronavirus restrictions

Surgeon General Jerome Adams is calling on the handful of governors who have yet to issue stay-at-home orders to at least enforce restrictions for one week in order to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. 

“Ninety percent of Americans are doing their part, even in the states where they haven’t had a shelter-in-place. But If you can’t give us 30 days, governors, give us a week, give us what you can so that we don’t overwhelm our health care systems over this next week, and then let’s reassess,” Adams said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 

Adams said he would advise the governors to follow the White House’s “30 days to slow the spread” guidelines, but he stopped short of calling for a national stay-at-home order. 

“Governors are rightly protective of their ability to determine what’s best for their citizens, we want them to have the science to make the best recommendations,” Adams said. 

But the surgeon general emphasized the urgency of the situation, and said the coming week will be among the hardest for the country. 

“The next week is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, it’s going to be our 9/11 moment, it’s going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives,” he said. “And we really need to understand that if we want to flatten that curve and get through to the other side, everyone needs to do their part.” 

New data compiled by Johns Hopkins University shows more than 312,000 confirmed coronavirus cases across the U.S. and 8,503 related deaths.