Trump ‘set to declare emergency’
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency on Friday over the coronavirus outbreak, invoking the Stafford Act to open the door to more federal aid for states and municipalities, Bloomberg reported citing two people familiar with the matter.
Trump spoke on Friday with Emmanuel Macron, the French president tweeted, about the pandemic, and agreed to organise a video conference with world leaders on Monday to coordinate research efforts on a vaccine and treatments and work on how to respond to the economic fallout.
US state governors and mayors stepped up actions to mitigate the spread, closing schools and cancelling public events. Louisiana declared an emergency over the pandemic and postponed its April 4 Democratic primary, the first state to do so with the battle for the party’s presidential nomination still undecided.
“Today I have certified that a state of emergency exists,” Louisiana secretary of state Kyle Ardoin said.
The state of Ohio likely has more than 100,000 people carrying the new coronavirus, the state health department director said.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday with state governor Mike DeWine to announce measures to slow the spread of the pandemic, director Amy Acton said Ohio had community spread of the virus. “We know now just the fact of community spread says that at least one percent, at the very least, one percent of our population is carrying this virus in Ohio today.
“We have 11.7 million people. So the math is over 100,000.”