Trump walks back halting task force
He says membership, like crisis, will evolve
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed course on plans to wind down his COVID-19 task force, attempting to balance his enthusiasm for “reopening” the country with rising infection rates in parts of the nation.
Democrats criticized Trump’s reopening strategy Wednesday, saying more federal support for testing and contact tracing is needed.
One day after the administration suggested that its work would be done around Memorial Day, Trump said the White House task force of public health professionals and senior government officials would continue after all, indefinitely, with its focus shifting toward rebooting the economy and the development of a vaccine.
“I thought we could wind it down sooner,” Trump said, adding, “I had no idea how popular the task force is.”
Trump said membership in the group would change as the nature of the crisis evolves.
As Trump pressed the nation to reopen, Dr. Tom Frieden the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill that the “war against COVID will be long and difficult.”
“We’re just at the beginning of this pandemic and must focus on the future,” he testified, predicting there will be 100,000 deaths by the end of the month. As bad as the crisis has been, he said, “it’s just the beginning.”
Even as Trump was declaring that much of the task force’s work on securing additional protective equipment was over, he was confronted with a different reality.
Sophia Thomas, president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, told Trump in an
Oval Office meeting that she had been reusing the same N95 medical mask for weeks, and only brought a new one for her visit to the White House.