Dr. Deborah Birx urged Americans on Thursday to continue social distancing to slow the spread of the coronavirus but clarified that large families in America did not apply.
“To everybody out there across the country, when we say no gatherings of ten, we wanted to be clear that if you have a family of ten, we don’t want you to be split up,” she said during the White House press briefing on Thursday.
Birx said that she was speaking primarily about dinner parties and cocktail parties bigger than ten.
“We’re only as strong as every community, every county, every state, every American following the guidelines to a T,” she said.
Birx said that it was obvious by the increasing number of cases around the United States that not every American was following the guidelines.
“This is really a call to action,” she said.
She said that other countries were beginning to reduce the increase of cases and that America could do the same if they followed the rules.
“We see Spain, we see Italy, we see France, we see Germany when we see others beginning to bend their curves, we can bend ours but it means that everybody has to take that same responsibility as Americans,” Birx said.