Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump's chief economic adviser, said that it would be a mistake to shut down the US economy again even as coronavirus cases surge to record highs.
"It'd really be a big mistake to take a step like another shutdown," Kudlow said during a Wednesday interview with CNBC. "It would do more harm than good."
Another shutdown would cause additional harm to businesses and people forced to stay home, and "the great V recovery might give way," he said.
On Tuesday, the US reported 60,000 new coronavirus cases, another record single-day spike that brought the total confirmed case count in the country to 3 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Kudlow said that despite uncertainty due to the coronavirus pandemic, "virtually every piece of data" points to a V-shaped economic recovery. Still, he said that going forward, "one cannot rule out there's a lot of scenarios here."
Most of the country is "doing rather well," said Kudlow, adding that there are some places that are in trouble as a rise in COVID-19 cases leads to rollbacks or pauses to reopening plans.
He also denied that the Trump administration is downplaying the threat of the virus to Americans. "No one's denied we've had a huge jump in cases in certain hot spots," he said, pointing to states such as Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and California, which have seen cases rise.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
