Trump continues cheerleading for reopening
While celebrating better-thanexpected economic numbers at the White House yesterday, President Donald Trump conceded that the coronavirus outbreak wasn’t over but insisted ‘‘we’re putting out the fires.’’
It’s more like a blaze raging out of control.
The president appears to be in denial as the country racks up record numbers of confirmed cases every day, with 50,000 reported Thursday. Although Trump has continued to blame the rising caseload on increased testing, a larger percentage of tests are coming back positive than before, a clear sign that more people are growing sick.
Florida reported more than 10,000 new cases Wednesday, with nearly 17 per cent of tests coming back positive. Arizona had more than 3300, with 25 per cent being positive.
The latest daily figures from Texas showed 8076 new cases. Nearly 14 per cent of tests in recent days have found an infection.
More tests are coming back positive in California as well; the state is seeing a surge in new cases after restrictions were loosened on restaurants and public gatherings.
The nationwide death toll, which stands at over 128,000, has not yet accelerated – fatalities typically lag a few weeks behind infections. In several states, hospital officials fear being overrun with patients needing critical care, much like what New York experienced earlier this year when it was the epicentre of the country’s pandemic.
But Trump on Thursday told
that ‘‘we’re going to be very good with the coronavirus’’ and ‘‘at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear.’’
And he described the coronavirus as more of a nuisance than a crisis, choosing to play cheerleader for a nascent economic resurgence that public health experts believe is contributing to the rising caseload.
‘‘We haven’t totally succeeded yet. We will soon. We haven’t killed all of the virus yet,’’ Trump said during a White House event celebrating American businesses.
Trump did not take questions, but Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said the administration did not regret turning its attention to getting people back to work.
‘‘There’s a safe way to reopen the economy, and we’re going to do that carefully,’’ he said.
Dr Eric Toner, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security, disagreed.
‘‘It’s very clear that the increasing caseload is due to premature relaxing of the containment measures,’’ he said. ‘‘Some states did not wait for all the metrics; they did not wait for testing and contact tracing to be in place, and opened too fast.
‘‘We could have reopened the economy safely. But we did not,’’ Toner added.
The escalating number of infections in the United States stands in stark contrast with the European Union, which has seen caseloads fall.
India reported another singleday record high of new virus cases yesterday while its monuments like the Taj Mahal will reopen for tourists next week. The 20,903 new cases took the national total to 625,544. The Health Ministry also reported another 379 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking fatalities up to 18,213.
With the current rate of infections, India is expected to surpass Russia’s 660,000 cases in coming days and become the third worst-hit country after the United States and Brazil. It has the eighthmost fatalities in the world, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally, but both numbers are thought to be far higher than has been confirmed around the world.
After a strict two-month lockdown, India has eased its restrictions in most of the country except for the highest-risk areas.
The Culture Ministry decided to reopen all monuments next week with a cap on the number of visitors and mandatory masks.
Australian authorities are considering locking down more suburbs in Melbourne, where 66 new coronavirus cases were reported.
Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said suburbs with more than five cases and a high infection rate could be added to the 36 suburbs that have been locked down since Wednesday.
In Sydney, health officials said a man who recently tested positive had been working in a Balmain supermarket. Around 50 supermarket staff have gone into isolation. Health authorities have urged people who have visited the supermarket and show symptoms to be tested.
South Korea has reported 63 newly confirmed cases of Covid-19 as health authorities scramble to mobilise public health tools to the southwestern city of Gwangju, where more than 50 people were found sickened over the past week.
The figures announced by the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention brought the national caseload to 12,967 infections, including 282 deaths.
Thirty-one of the new cases were reported from the Seoul metropolitan area, which has been at the centre of a virus resurgence since late May. Six of the new cases came from Gwangju, where officials have raised concern over possible shortages in hospital capacities, while 13 of them came from the southeastern city of Daegu, which had been the epicentre of a major outbreak in February and March. –