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Gov. Hogan Says Trump Administration's Messaging On Coronavirus Response Is 'Pretty Confusing'

ANNAPOLIS (WJZ) -- During an appearance on CNN's New Day show Tuesday morning, Gov. Larry Hogan said some of the messaging coming from the White House is "pretty confusing."

President Trump was speaking just on Monday about how some of the social distancing measures will be able to be relaxed in parts of the country, meanwhile Gov. Hogan is ramping up these measures, when asked about how his policies versus the president's matched this is what he said:

'Well they don't really match quite frankly, some of the messaging is pretty confusing, and I think it's uh not just it doesn't match with what we're doing in Maryland, some of the messaging coming out of the administration doesn't match." Hogan said. "Where you have the surgeon general and Anthony Fauci saying things that were completely opposite of that yesterday."

The governor has been urging the public to pay attention to what his administration is saying and focus on the social distancing measures provided by the state.

CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: 

While President Trump is saying that he believes things might be relaxing in the next few days, Gov. Hogan disagreed, saying his team doesn't think the peak in cases has even happened yet.

"So we're just trying to take the best advice we can from the scientists and all the experts and making the decisions that we believe are necessary for our state. We don't think that we're going to be in any way ready to be out of this in five or six days or so or whenever this 15 days is up from the time they started this imaginary clock. Most people think that we're weeks away from the peak if not months, and that's the advice we're getting from the smart folks at Johns Hopkins and NIH and University of Maryland and places like that."

He said while they have been closing businesses that aren't essential, they are also looking at closing schools and will hopefully have a decision over the next couple of days.

When asked what message he wants the people of Maryland to listen to this is what he said:

"Well I want the people of Maryland to continue to pay as much attention as possible we want them to listen to us, we've been very strongly telling them that unless you have an essential reason for leaving your home we want you to stay in your home. We are closing all of those businesses that are not absolutely essential, we've closed the schools, and we think it's absolutely critical that everyone be a part of this breaking the back of this virus so we don't infect hundreds of thousands of people in our state and we don't have thousands of deaths."

He added that cases in the state are up about 600 percent from the week before. "We're going up, we're not going down." He said.

For the latest information on coronavirus go to the Maryland Health Department's website or call 211. You can find all of WJZ's coverage on coronavirus in Maryland here.

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