A top U.S. health official working with the coronavirus task force said that people who need noncritical surgeries should wait until after the disease has subsided.
White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told reporters during a Tuesday afternoon press briefing that unless people believe they have been infected by the coronavirus, they should consider staying away from hospitals tasked with fighting the infectious disease outbreak.
“Things that don’t need to be done over the next two weeks, don’t get it done. If you’re a person with an elective surgery, you don’t want to go into a hospital right now,” said Birx. “There’s a lot of distraction. There’s a lot of people doing a lot of other things to save people’s lives. So let’s all be responsible and cancel things that we can cancel to really free up hospital beds and space.”
[Click here for complete coronavirus coverage]
Yesterday, Birx said millennials, the age group between 25-39, are the people who can help stunt the spread of the disease best by adhering to new guidelines that suggest people stay inside unless to purchase essential goods.
“Why do I think that millennials are the key? Because they’re the ones that are out and about, and they’re the most likely to be in social gatherings, and they’re the most likely to be the least symptomatic,” Birx explained.
Though the disease has shuttered global economies and obligated people around the world to stay away from public gatherings as the death toll rises, a tracker created by Johns Hopkins University shows that out of over 180,000 infected patients, more than 80,000 have recovered from the illness.
