During a meeting with the National Governor's Association at the White House on Monday, President Biden heard a bipartisan chorus urging him to “move away from the pandemic.”
“There’s a number of areas that we have full agreement on, and that is one,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters, according to CNN, adding that the group asked Biden “to help give us clear guidelines on how we can return to a greater state of normality.”
Hutchinson acknowledged case numbers and hospitalizations across the United States are still high but said “people are striving for more normal life.”
He also noted that there needs to be a better way to gauge Covid-19 other than just hospitalizations—“how about the hospitalizations that are really caused by Covid,” he said.
Still, there need to be clear “guidelines” on how to move towards an endemic state, Hutchinson noted, “where you're managing this virus like you would other illnesses in our country.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), meanwhile, said there was a "lot of good discussion about what does the road from pandemic to endemic look like? How do we keep score?"
Biden, for his part, said there’s still “a way to go” before returning to normal life, “but we’re moving.”
Asked about the meeting, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said there is not a "disconnect" between Hutchinson's comments and the White House's view.