Individual states are in charge of returning to normal life and resuming business and schools as they deem fit, given their specific number of infections and other public health factors.

The federal government's social distancing guidelines expired at the end of April. The White House also created a suggested three-phase plan to help states strategize how to reopen.

While some states are already taking different approaches to returning to normalcy – with some still under stay-at-home orders and others without them federal health officials continue to warn against reopening too soon so as to prevent a deadly spike in cases that could overwhelm hospitals before treatments and a vaccine are developed.

More than one million people across the U.S. have been confirmed to have had the coronavirus, according to a New York Times tracker.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious disease and one of the leading medical voices on Trump's task force, told The Washington Post on Tuesday:“I’ve always said if you do that prematurely, you run the risk of there being rebound and [an] increase in cases."

"How many cases there are going to be, how many deaths, I can’t predict," he said.

The number of U.S. cases are growing nationwide by 2-to-4 percent every day, and the number of deaths still averages nearly 2,000 per day, according to a New York Times analysis.

“I think that, as far as the task force, Mike Pence and the task force have done a great job,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, according to NBC. "But we’re now looking at a little bit of a different form, and that form is safety and opening, and we’ll have a different group probably set up for that.”

As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from CDC, WHO, and local public health departments. To help provide doctors and nurses on the front lines with life-saving medical resources, donate to Direct Relief here.

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