US reaching top of curve: Trump
13,000 DEAD US president stays optimistic as nationwide fatalities continue to rise, mostly in the state of New York
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the US might be getting to the top of the “curve” of the coronavirus outbreak and said he did not see an early written warning about the pandemic from a top White House aide.
He said he was reluctant to talk about it but that the country might be on track for far fewer deaths than projected. Trump’s coronavirus task force previously projected, based on models, that as many as 240,000 people in the US could die in the pandemic.
“We want to get it (the economy) open soon, that’s why I think maybe we’re getting to the very top of the curve,” Trump said.
New York City’s death toll from the coronavirus rose past 4,000 on Tuesday, eclipsing the number killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. The development came even as the crisis seemed to be easing or at least stabilising, by some measures, in New York.
New York state recorded 731 new coronavirus deaths, its biggest one-day jump yet, for a statewide toll of nearly 5,500, governor Andrew Cuomo said. “A lot of pain again today for many New Yorkers,” he said.
“You see that plateauing - that’s because of what we are doing. If we don’t do what we are doing, that is a much different curve,” Cuomo said. “So social distancing is working.”
With service drastically reduced, essential workers are encountering some busy trains as they head to their jobs. Photos taken in Brooklyn showed riders sitting or standing within inches of each other, some not wearing face masks.
Across the US, the death toll neared 13,000, with close to 400,000 confirmed infections. Some of the deadliest hot spots were Detroit, New Orleans and the New York metropolitan area, which includes parts of Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.
New Jersey recorded over 1,200 dead, most of them in the northern counties where many residents commute into New York City.
Trump again trained his anger at the World Health Organization (WHO) and threatened to freeze US funding for it, saying the international group had “missed the call” on the pandemic and that it was “very China-centric”.
US surgeon general Jerome Adams said that if Americans continue to practice social distancing for the rest of April, “we will be able to get back to some sense of normalcy”.