Washington Lt. Gov. Cyrus Habib Discusses COVID-19 Response

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And I want to ask you about the sort of potential exit strategy. Is it too early to be talking about that? Because clusters of states and clusters of governors on the West Coast, on the East Coast are beginning to try to unite to figure out how and when they may be able to gradually move out of lockdown and back to — back to the economic life.

LT. GOV. CYRUS HABIB (D-WA): I don’t think it’s too early to be thinking about it and planning for it, and doing so in a collective fashion, in a strategic fashion. When you talk about these three West Coast states — and we hope that others will also come together with us — you’re talking about a pretty sizable percentage of the American population. And so it is important that we start to think about it. But what it will take is, we know — and I know that you have experts who come on your show who have talked about this — we know that testing, we know that contact tracing, and, ultimately, scientific research into a vaccine and/or a cure are going to be essential. And we also know that we may have multiple rounds of this. So, I do think it’s important to level with the — with my constituents and with the American people to say, this is not — just because we’re planning this doesn’t mean that things are going to go back to normal in May. We have not seen the indications that would suggest that things are going to go back to normal in the very near future. And, in some ways, even when we do start to let up on these executive orders, we know that things aren’t going to be perfectly the same for a long time, just because — certainly until we find a vaccine or cure.