Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti says his city will “never be completely open” until there is a cure for the coronavirus.
He made the comments Wednesday morning to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America,” just one day after it was announced Los Angeles County will extend its stay-at-home directive to residents for three more months, though some restrictions may be loosened or lifted.
“I think we have to all recognize that we’re not moving beyond Covid-19,” he added. “We’re learning to live with it.”
“It’s important to take this serious because [the virus] is as dangerous today as it was the first day that it arrived in our cities and our country,” the two-term mayor added. “So, quite frankly, there’s no so-called ‘open state’ or ‘open country’ that doesn’t continue to have health orders telling us to cover our faces, physically distance and to tell people that you’re safest working from and staying at home. That’s all that the county health director was saying, and we can’t expect that to disappear in a matter of weeks or even a few months.”
He urged residents not to “over react” to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer’s Tuesday assertion that “with all certainty” the county would need to extend the order due to the continued spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, on Fox News’ morning programming, “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade was decrying the county’s announcement, questioning how some areas could handle the response to the pandemic so differently, with Georgia and other states re-opening businesses while Los Angeles County extends at least some of the “Safer at Home.”
“What kind of attitude is this? Is this America?” Kilmeade demanded.
According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 32,000 people in Los Angeles County have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and at least 1,570 have died.
Watch Garcetti’s “GMA” segment above.