Americans Told to Continue Social Distancing Through April

"You can imagine if 100 people were going to get sick over 100 days, you would have a certain kind of pressure on the health care system,” Anne Schuchat, M.D., principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), explained in an earlier interview with AARP. “But if 100 people get sick all in the same day, it's a different kind of pressure.” If society is able to slow the spread of the virus, health care workers can “take better care of every individual person,” she added.

The extended White House guidelines push for all Americans — including young and healthy people, who are less likely to get severely ill from the coronavirus if infected — to work from home, if possible, and to avoid eating in bars and restaurants.

Older adults: Stay home; stay away from others

Older adults and those with underlying health conditions — the populations at highest risk for severe illness from the coronavirus — are encouraged to stay home as much as possible and to stay away from other people. Health experts also stress the importance of washing hands often and wiping down frequently touched surfaces, to avoid getting sick.

Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, urged Americans on Sunday not to get “complacent” if their community seems relatively unaffected by the virus.

"So we shouldn't take any solace when we see low levels in different states, different cities, different areas, because they're very vulnerable to an explosion,” Fauci said. “This can happen anywhere, and that's really one of the issues that we're concerned about and why we were so reluctant to pull back at a time when we need to put our foot on the gas, as opposed to on the brake.”