“Whenever we open up, however we do it, if people aren’t confident, if they don’t think they’re safe, they’re not going to go to restaurants, they’re not going to go to bars, they’re not going to really get back into society,” DeWine said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

DeWine, a Republican who issued a stay-at-home order in Ohio on March 22, said that it could be very difficult to begin opening things up.

“I will say this, that going out of this thing is going to be just as tough, if not tougher, than going into it and closing things down,” he said.

The governor, who took office in January 2019, said that testing will be “imperative” to move forward until an effective vaccine is developed and made available to the general public.