The director for the Centers of Disease Control & Prevention, the U.S.’s leading national public health institute, said on Monday, April 13, that the United States appears to be nearing the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once that peak is hit, new infections reported daily will begin to decline, a process that, over time, will pave the way for the country to “reopen gradually in a thoughtful, prudent way,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told Fox & Friends.

Dr. Robert Redfield

“I think we’ve really stabilized across the country,” Redfield said on Monday. “We’re still seeing a small rate of increase in the range of 5% to 6%, as opposed to where we were before when it was 20%, 30% per day; but we are close.”

Redfield continued: “We’re stabilized and I anticipate that we will begin to see a decline in the days ahead, but we have got to just continue to take it day by day and look at the data.”

Redfield’s comments came a day after White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, said that he’s cautiously optimistic that the coronavirus outbreak is starting to slow its spread across the country.

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Fauci said there are indications that some metrics for assessing the state of the pandemic “are starting to level off.”

In the U.S., New York has been hardest by hit the coronavirus. While the state experienced the worst single-day death toll from the virus last week, hospitalizations, intubations and intensive-care check-ins have begun to come down, indicating that a corner could be being turned, according to Fauci.

“The number of hospitalizations appears to have hit an apex, and the apex appears to be a plateau,” said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “The hospitalization rate is down, and that’s important. We have more people getting infected still, we have more people going into the hospital, but we have a lower number... Fewer people are going into the hospitals, still net positive.” Cuomo added that the number of deaths in New York is starting to stabilize too, but at “a horrific rate.”

Meanwhile, Fauci said Sunday, April 12, that come May, evaluations could be made about rolling back certain social distancing practices in areas of the country that have not been as badly impacted. “We can look around and say, ‘OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on?’” Fauci said. “If so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down.”

Redfield gave a similar analysis Monday, April 13. It’s “going to be really important that we stay committed to the mitigation steps that we have in the 30 days to slow the spread of this coronavirus,” he told Fox.

“We’re going to need to reopen gradually in a thoughtful, prudent way, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, based on the data about what’s the state of transmission of this virus in those areas.”

Coronavirus-related disruption has had a profound affect on the promotional products industry. On Monday, Counselor reported that promo distributors’ quarterly sales declined for the first time in more than a decade in Q1 2020 – a drop that was a direct result of COVID-19 disruption. While sales were strong through early March, the economic destruction wrought by shutdowns tied to the coronavirus torpedoed sales through the final weeks of March, throwing off the quarter.

Sales in the #promotionalproducts space were strong through early March. Then #COVID19 struck, triggering the industry's first quarterly sales decline in a decade+ https://t.co/YWC2dPX06a @asicentral @johnsresnick @ASI_MBell @Bellantone @Tim_Andrews_ASI

— Chris Ruvo (@ChrisR_ASI) April 13, 2020