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Law360 (June 15, 2020, 9:37 PM EDT ) U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said Monday that states' recent efforts to boost their economies by loosening coronavirus restrictions are not to blame for the jumps in new cases reported across the Sun Belt, pointing in part to a rise in testing capacities.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia testifying on Capitol Hill last week. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call/Pool via AP)
After state leaders across the country took steps to ease pandemic-related restrictions throughout May, many states are seeing record high numbers of new coronavirus cases, with Johns Hopkins University data showing spikes in Texas, Alabama, Arizona, Florida and others since Memorial Day.
Daily confirmed cases of coronavirus in Texas surged past 2,000 for the first time this month, topping 2,500 last Wednesday, according to JHU.
The university figures also show that Alabama averaged almost 1,000 new cases per day this past weekend, nearly double what the state was reporting at the end of May. Arizona's new cases surpassed 1,500 a day on Friday after hovering between 250 and 500 during most of last month, according to JHU's data.
However, Scalia insisted Monday that a nationwide movement toward reopening isn't the problem, saying that "the more promptly and safely we reopen, the better our prospects of regaining the economy."
He did say there's no cause to "jettison all discipline with giddy abandon," and "precautions are essential to continued reopening," and that hygiene, distancing and masks remain important.
Scalia gave his remarks during a virtual event unveiling The Heritage Foundation's recently published guidelines for boosting the economy, in which the conservative think tank championed an expeditious approach and touted deregulation as a way to get businesses on their feet.
In a 122-page report compiled by the foundation's National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, the group recommended cutting corporate taxes, rolling back overtime pay requirements and making paid sick and family leave mandates optional, among other deregulatory steps.
Scalia echoed these principles during his speech, saying "tax relief and vigilance against unnecessary regulatory burdens" are important to getting the economy back on track.
He also took a moment to criticize the media's coverage of the pandemic, as he said the surprising drop in the unemployment rate in the May jobs report "annoyed" the "major media" because "for some of them, good news can be bad."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier this month that the unemployment rate in May had dropped from 14.7% to 13.3%, but it noted that many individuals surveyed were erroneously classified as employed, even though they had been laid off.
According to the BLS, if the workers had been classified correctly, the real unemployment rate would be roughly 3 percentage points higher.
--Editing by Michael Watanabe.
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