U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., held a virtual roundtable with economists and medical professionals Wednesday on the best methods by which policymakers can safely open businesses that have been closed.

Toomey said states should remember why stay-at-home and business closure orders were issued in the first place, and keep that in mind when discussing reopening.

“It wasn’t because we thought we would kill the virus by doing so,” he said. “I think the main reason that we closed our economies and instituted stay-at-home policies virtually everywhere in the country was because we wanted to slow down the rate of transmission of the virus so as to avoid a surge of victims that would be so great it would overwhelm the capacity of our hospitals.”

Saying most of the country hasn’t seen that, Toomey asked what would be a safe way to “reopen the economy” while ensuring that a surge would not happen in the future.

Paul Romer, professor of economics at New York University, said letting the virus run rampant through the population, with what is currently known, would have a “severe depressing effect” on the economy.

“This strategy of letting the virus spread through the population is not a quick path for economic recovery,” Romer said.

Romer said he would support, from an economic standpoint, widespread, population-scale testing and quarantine of the infected, rather than small-scale testing and tracing of those with whom infected patients have been in contact.

Dr. Mark McClellan, professor of business, medicine and policy at Duke University, said any decision should be made by looking at what’s best both for public health and the economy, adding that an economic re-opening would be less likely to work if people aren’t sure the pandemic is contained.

“A lot of people are framing the decisions here as an either-or. Either we open the economy, or we can contain the pandemic,” McClellan said. “I think it’s very important for policies right now to focus on how we can effectively do both of those things.”