Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said reports of a national lockdown coming from a source inside the DHS are not true.
“We’ve seen the number of reports, and I’ve personally gotten contacted a number of times about text messages or these screenshots going around saying I know someone at DHS, and they say we will have a national lockdown or a national quarantine,” Wolf said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
Wolf called any such messages “absolutely false.”
“It’s not true, and it is part of a disinformation campaign,” he said. “And what we know, whether it’s Russia or other cyber actors, they like to sow discord on any controversial issues.”
President Trump has said he does not think a national lockdown or mandatory “stay at home” order would be needed to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Several states with higher concentrations of confirmed cases such as New York, California, and Illinois have issued statewide lockdowns and “shelter-in-place” orders.
More than 26,000 cases of the virus have been confirmed in the United States, leading to at least 340 deaths as of Sunday morning.
