In China, it was suppressed to somewhere around 0.3. They went from nearly 4000 new confirmed cases per day in early February to about 100 new confirmed cases per day (at a much higher rate of testing) a month later. New cases are low enough now that contact tracing appears to be holding the epidemic in check.

Once you reach a low overall case count, you can ease measures to target R ~ 1.

The alternative, letting the epidemic burn through the population, means sacrificing ~0.5% of the population.

Given the steady pace of ~30k new confirmed cases per day in the US, R has not been suppressed enough. Yet governors are talking about easing restrictions...