Parts of the U.S. may be ready in May to ease emergency measures taken against the coronavirus pandemic but there’s no universal “light switch” to flip on, Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

There’s also the possibility of a Covid-19 rebound in the fall which could be a factor in November’s elections, he said.

Fauci and a range of others said availability of widespread testing would be key to relaxing social isolation that continues in most states.

“It could probably start at least in some ways maybe next month,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“We are hoping by the end of the month we can look around and say, okay, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on, if so, do it,” he said.

Ultimately the decision on reopening will come from America’s governors and mayors, who imposed stringent social distancing measures in the first place.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said on CNN that moving too quickly would be “gasoline on the fire.” The state has the second highest number of coronavirus cases in the U.S., behind New York. A reopening should be done “in broad harmony” with neighboring states, Murphy said.

‘Balanced Approach’

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on CBS that her city, the third largest in the U.S., cannot open up the economy until it has “all the health care controls in place,” including widespread testing and contact tracing.

“Return to normal will not be a step function, like throwing the transfer switch from generator to grid,” said Dr. Craig Smith, chair of the Department of Surgery at New York-Presbyterian’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

“The greatest single challenge facing everyone in the world is restoration of confidence,” Smith wrote Sunday in a blog post. It will also involve, he said, keeping superstition at bay: “We must educate people on how to assess risk-benefit balance in varying situations.”

Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said “the safety and welfare of the American people” has to come first.

Election Impact?

Members of the White House coronavirus task force “are really looking at this from a balanced approach,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” despite President Donald Trump’s hope that stringent measures can start to be removed in some fashion on May 1.

“There is an urgency around this, but I have to not received political pressure to have FDA make one decision versus another,” Hahn said.

Many states have postponed their primary elections from April to May or June or are pursing expanded mail-in voting. Fauci said he hopes in-person voting will be safe for November’s general election but “can’t guarantee it.”

“There is always the possibility, as that -- as we get into next fall, and the beginning of early winter -- that we could see a rebound” of coronavirus spread, Fauci said. “Hopefully we will be able to respond to that rebound in a much more effective way than what we have seen now in January, February, March.”

--With assistance from Stephen Cunningham and Kristen V. Brown.