Trump's top economic adviser says the US might not shut down its economy during a potential second wave of COVID-19

• Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Friday morning that the United States may not impose sweeping stay-at-home orders during a possible second wave of COVID-19.
• Kudlow said a member of the White House coronavirus task force told him "we won't have to reshut down because first of all we know more, we have more experience, and second of all we are much better equipped with the right tools."
• Despite Kudlow's optimism, the US still has a long way to go in terms of ramping up testing and scaling up contact tracing networks to be able to reopen the economy while combatting the virus.
• CDC Director Robert Redfield has also warned that a second wave of COVID-19 in the fall or winter on top of the regular seasonal flu could devastate healthcare systems and cause further economic damage.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Larry Kudlow, the chairman of the National Economic Council and President Donald Trump's top economic adviser, said on Friday morning that the United States may not impose sweeping stay-at-home orders or business closures if the US experiences a second wave of COVID-19.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Kudlow said that a "senior" member of the White House coronavirus task force told him that major shutdowns of business activity will not be needed if the United States experiences a second wave of COVID-19.

"One of the senior people in that group, now I asked that person what happens — right now the virus numbers are flattening out," Kudlow said. "That is a really good thing. That means we can reopen this economy. I asked this person 'What happens if we get a jump back up in virus numbers?"'

"And the response was simply 'Look, we won't have to reshut down because first of all we know more, we have more experience, and second of all we are much better equipped with the right tools," Kudlow added. "President Trump deserves some credit for putting together a massive infrastructure, whether its testing, or face masks, or gowns...I don't want dwell on the worst case because I am an optimist."

Many public health experts do agree that fighting the novel coronavirus and moving to reopen more businesses to stimulate the economy aren't mutually exclusive. But despite Kudlow's optimism about the country's preparedness, the vast majority of US states aren't testing nearly enough people per day to consider safely reopening for businesses, according to estimates from the Harvard Global Health Institute.

And as Politico reported on Wednesday, federal officials from agencies including FEMA are still reporting massive shortages of testing equipment and personal protective equipment across the country.

In an April interview with the Washington Post, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said even if the US has expanded testing capacity, a greater supply of medical equipment, and mitigation measures in place, a second wave in the fall or winter could hit the US even harder than the current outbreak.

Redfield said that a winter outbreak of COVID-19 would be particularly catastrophic for hospitals and medical systems when layered on top of the usual winter flu season and higher rates of other illnesses that are more prevalent in the fall and winter months, including pneumonia and bronchitis.

"There's a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Redfield said. "And when I've said this to others, they kind of put their head back; they don't understand what I mean."

Redfield told The Post that if the virus had hit the US a few months earlier at the height of flu season, "it could have been really, really, really, really difficult in terms of health capacity."

The coronavirus is both more contagious and more deadly than seasonal influenza, and a vaccine against it almost certainly won't be available by the time flu season comes around.

Because of that, Redfield said, it'll be more important than ever for people to get their flu shots to reduce their risk and help lessen the burden on the healthcare system. He told The Post that more people getting vaccinated against the flu "may allow there to be a hospital bed available for your mother or grandmother that may get coronavirus."

Redfield emphasized that in the absence of a deployable vaccine, the US will need to both massively scale up its testing regimen and heavily invest in mass-scale contact tracing to track how the disease is progressing and contain outbreaks.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a devastating 20.5 million payrolls cut in the month of April, bringing the US unemployment rate to 14.7%.

Read the original article on Business Insider