Washington DC [USA], Apr 3 : The surge in number of the coronavirus cases in the United States reveals that Americans are not following the Trump administration's social distancing guidelines, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Deborah Birx said on Friday.
"I can tell by the curve that not every American is following it (social distance guidelines)," Birx said during the White House's daily coronavirus briefing.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the country is now leading the world with more than 2,42,000 confirmed cases and 5,850 deaths. Nearly 30,000 new cases were registered within the last 24 hours.
"When the president (Donald Trump) put out guidelines 16 days ago, that was serious. And you can see what happened subsequently. And you can see the number of individuals affected since then. The people we are seeing affected today - and in hospitals today - were infected after the guidelines went out," said Brix.
She further said that the upward trajectory in the US has compelled Trump to extend the social distancing guidelines for 30 days.
At the Coronavirus taskforce briefing, White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro said that Trump administration will soon issue an order to crack down on the sale of COVID-19-related medical supplies in the black market, which has been driving the cost up for supplies.
"What is going to happen tomorrow is the president (Trump) is going to sign another order which is in the works. It is going to empower Customs and Border Protection with the help of people like the Post Office and express mail like UPS to basically deal with that issue. We are going to crack down unmercifully," Navarro said.
Trump also announced a new set of guidelines for nursing homes to combat coronavirus. The new guidelines are an addition to previous guidelines that instructed nursing homes not to allow any medically unnecessary visitors.
As per the new guidelines, nursing homes should assign the same staff to care for the same group of residents consistently to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the global tally of the total number of people infected by coronavirus as of Friday crossed 1,000,000 and the death toll from the disease exceeded 50,000, as per the data provided by Johns Hopkins University.
( With inputs from ANI )