Infectious disease specialist disagrees with U.S. approach against coronavirus

One in five Americans live in parts of the country that are under stay-at-home orders.

UCLA School of Medicine Doctor Jeffrey Klausner appeared on Saturday's Mornings on 2, and said that the U.S. is actually doing "too much" in connection to COVID-19.

Klausner spent more than a decade at the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

He said the U.S. can pivot and take a different approach, and not shut down the economy.

He recommended that schools and businesses reopen across the nation.

Klausner prefers a more localized approach, in which the hardest hit areas would take extreme measures, like shelter-in-place, rather than the entire country take what he called a "hammer" approach.

He said that the U.S. can follow several Asian countries, such as Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, that have controlled the epidemic.

Even though, Italy announced 793 deaths and 6,557 new cases on Saturday alone, Klausner said these cases were centered in the northern part of the country, and that other locales, such as Rome and Naples have been able to escape the brunt of the outbreak.

Klausner understands that his point of view may be not be popular or shared by other infectious disease specialists, but he says a top scientist at Stanford, as well as Yale agree with him.

Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom had written letters to President Trump and congressional leaders earlier in the week, stating that the state needed major financial help.

Newsom wrote that some computer models project 25.5 million people in California could be infected.