US surgeon general details spread of coronavirus and debate over masks l ABC News

Joining us now from Washington is the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Jerome Adams Dr. Adams, thank you again for joining us, we really appreciate your time, we know how busy you are, but we want to know your opinion and a few things because at first it was said that 15 days were needed to slow the

spread

, then the president extended it until the end. April many people are wondering what the chances are that that will be enough doctor, well the original 15 days were designed to slow the

spread

and so that we had time to reassess and we learned some good things and some bad things, the bad things that What we learned is that there are places all over the country, no place has been spared the spread of this disease, but the good

news

is that when you look at places like Washington, can you look at places like California that aggressively mitigated social policies? distance that they were able to level out and flatten their curves, so we're looking at these next 30 days as an opportunity for the entire country to really understand that if we do the right thing, then we can flatten our curves in our different areas and, in fact, get up and get there On the other hand, you asked us for 30 days is going to be enough, well it will be for some places it will not be for others depending on where they are in their curve but the most important thing you should know is that if you are aggressive in terms of mitigation, you can reach the other side and usually in about three weeks you peak and start to see cases go down, that's the hope of the mask

debate

.

I know about a month ago you chimed in at the beginning and you were saying don't shop, don't wear

masks

if you're healthy and now the CDC and others are changing their recommendations, so where do you stand right now on people who do they use

masks

that have no symptoms? Thank you for the opportunity to clarify the situation. air on that Robin initially the CDC, the World Health Organization and my office recommended that the

general

public not wear masks based on the best science available at the time in terms of whether or not it prevented the wearer from contracting

coronavirus

, now that We have learned about this. disease and we've always said we're going to learn more, we're going to adapt and we've learned that there is a fair amount of asymptomatic spread, so we've asked the CDC to take another look at whether having more people wear masks will prevent transmission of the disease to other people, but this is the most important thing now, even if you wear masks, it can't be at the expense of social distancing, we don't want people to think, hey, I'm going to wear a face covering, so it's appropriate For me to go out with other people, the most important thing right now is for people to stay home and again, the CDC is looking at whether or not we should recommend that more people wear masks when going out, the last point I would make to people who wear masks.

I mean, if you're going to cover your face when you go out, understand that you don't need an n95 mask yet and if you're wearing one of those in 95 masks, you might as well do that. Taking it off the hands of a healthcare worker who desperately needs it to care for patients. Yes, that's a good point and I'm glad you asked that final question. You were talking about how to stay home, but you know that's not the Across the country, there are some states that haven't issued that, like in Florida, do you think governors should have stricter guidelines in their states about staying home? ?

Well, what we want everyone to do is look at these 30 days. to the state to stop the spread guidelines including social distancing, staying six feet away from each other, including limiting large gatherings, we trust that governors and mayors will understand their people and understand whether they feel they can trust or not on the people of their states to make the right decisions and you see a lot of governors have said look, we don't want to take any risks, we're going to ask people to shelter in place, but the most important thing is that regardless of how you do it Whatever you do in your state, you should encourage and allow as many people as possible to stay home, including giving them social support so they can do the right things and that's why the bill that passed last week was so incredibly Importantly, we don't want people to feel like they're going to lose their jobs or lose opportunities to support their families because they're doing the right thing and they're thinking that it's April 1st and a lot of bills are due today dr.

Adams, we are going to have very little Robin, we checked very well and the good

news

, as I said, is that Washington, Italy, as everyone mentioned earlier, we knew that even in New York we are seeing a slowdown in acceleration. I am sure we can get to the other side if we all cooperate and do our part together thank you dr. Athens, thank you, thank you, hello everyone, George Stephanopoulos, thank you for visiting the ABC News YouTube channel. For more video highlights from the show and live event coverage, click right here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget. to download the ABC News app to receive breaking news alerts thanks for watching