S, bringing the total to more than 3800 dead now to the man helping lead the fight against the deadly disease.

Earlier today, I spoke with the surgeon general, Dr Jerome Adams, a member of the White House Corona Virus Task Force.

I want to start with the confusion and the debate on whether the public should be wearing masks or face coverings.

On February 29th you tweeted quite pointedly seriously.

People stopped buying masks.

They're not effective in preventing general public from catching Corona virus.

But if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk.

Now, I understand that was a month ago, and there has been something of a shift at the highest levels in thinking on this issue.

Can you clarify?

At that time, the CDC and the World Health Organization looked at the totality of data out there on people wearing masks and came to the conclusion that if you wear a mask, it doesn't protect you from my disease.

What it does, it's protect me from your disease.

And so we recommend that people who were sick where a mask.

We recommend that people who were around someone whose covert positive wear a mask but do not recommend that the general public wears masks as a protective mechanism.

But we've also seen that cotton mask cloth mask are becoming more and more available.

And so we're looking at the data to determine whether or not it is appropriate.

In some circumstances.

Dr.

Burkes mentioned that it's moving from the cities to the suburbs and perhaps even into rural areas.

Overtime?

What hot spots are you keeping an eye on?

Where you concerned about the next spread of Kobe?

Well, to be honest, I'm concerned about everywhere because we want no one to feel like they're immune to this.

But in particular New Orleans is is emerging.

Detroit is emerging Miami.

We're worried about these urban areas, but we also want to make sure as we're increasing testing and testing is rapidly increasing that it's also getting out to the suburbs into the rural areas.

What does life look like on May 1st?

If you're gonna open up certain sectors of the economy so that people can go back to work.

I spoke to an Elmhurst doctor in Queens yesterday Who's thought that perhaps it was the pact.

People on the subways who were spreading Corona virus could face covering act as a way of preventing asymptomatic carriers from spreading well.

And that's again something we're looking at.

And we know that that's gonna be in some areas.

We know in places like New York City that if we want to reopen, people are gonna run back to the subways.

And that's why we're reviewing data about again, perhaps asking people to wear cotton or cloth mask when when we go back to reopening.

But we're also hoping that we'll get therapeutics available in the next weeks.

Two months that we can say with confidence, have efficacy, and we're hoping that we'll have a vaccine my next year.

Then that's how they can protect themselves.

We've got a game changer out there potentially, and that's the new abbot test and test like it that will give us an answer within five minutes as to whether or not you have Corona virus.

Governor Cuomo repeatedly called for federal coordination so that states weren't getting into bidding wars for things like masks and ventilators.

Why aren't states being encouraged to temporarily share ventilators?

We are working with states and encouraging them to really look at their local and regional capacity in addition to the federal capacity.

The stockpile.

We're working to backfill it.

We're sending it out to places that need it the most from a federal perspective.

Dr.

Adams.

The United States now has the highest number of confirmed cases in the world, and people are pointing to places like Germany and South Korea for getting ahead of the virus.

Do you think the U.

S was prepared?

It's hard to get people to wrap their heads around what pandemic preparedness actually means.

We saw this during Ebola.

We saw this during each one in one we learned.

But until people actually go through a situation like this, they don't believe it can happen to them.

They don't believe their hospital could run out of P P e.

They don't believe they don't have enough ventilators.

And so we're trying to learn the lessons.

So we're focused on making sure people have the resource is that they need right now, But we also want to make sure we learn these lessons to your point and that we do a better job of pandemic preparedness of a country.

I think it's important that we understand being socially distant doesn't mean that we have to be socially disconnected.

There's a 80 year old lady who lived next door to me and I went and rang her doorbell and then back six feet away and said, Hey, is there anything that you need?

Are you doing okay?

It's still appropriate for us.

Thio, check in on people, even though we're maintaining social distancing.

Dr.

Adams, it's nice to know you're not just the surgeon general, your good neighbor.

Well, I'm trying to be a good neighbor, a good dad.

I have a 15 of 14 and a 10 year old, so I know very much at home the pains of trying to social distance.

But we will get through this.

Dr.

Adams, thank you so much for joining us and giving us all your insights and perspective.

Thank you.

Juju Corona virus dot Go for more information or your state Department of Health website.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

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