Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump reviving task force briefings on pandemic
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday that he is resurrecting White House coronavirus task force briefings as the number of confirmed covid-19 cases spiked in hot spots throughout the country.
“I think it’s a great way to get information out to the public,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, saying he hopes to discuss progress on vaccines and therapeutics. His once-daily turns behind the White House briefing room podium largely ended in late April after the president’s off-the-cuff suggestion that injecting toxic disinfectant could help treat the coronavirus.
Trump for months had heeded aides who pushed for him to all but ignore the virus and instead focus on the economy and more politically advantageous terrain.
Trump also tweeted a photo of himself in a mask Monday, calling it an act of patriotism, after months of resistance to being publicly seen in the face coverings — deemed vital to slowing the spread of the virus — as a sign of weakness.
White House aides said the format, venue and frequency of the president’s forthcoming appearances, which could start today, haven’t been finalized. And it wasn’t clear whether he would field questions or share the stage with others, including Vice President Mike Pence and Drs. Deborah Birx or Anthony Fauci.
Republicans have been pushing for the administration to take a more visible
role in battling the pandemic, fearing that the crisis will continue unabated and lead to a Democratic sweep in the November election. Several have differed from the president in consistently urging people to wear masks and respect restrictions on public gatherings to slow the spread of the virus.
But their calls have focused on letting his administration’s experts take center stage. Instead, Trump appears ready take the podium.
“I’ll do it at 5 o’clock like we were doing,” he said. “We had a good slot. A lot of people were watching.”
Trump will use the briefings “to speak directly to the American people about the federal government’s coronavirus response and other pertinent issues,” said White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews.
The return to briefings has been championed in the West Wing by senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, who advocated publicly last week that Trump should return to the podium to more clearly highlight steps toward economic recovery but also create a stage to display leadership by addressing Americans’ concerns about covid-19.
“His approval rating on the pandemic was higher when he was at the podium,” Conway said Friday. “It was at 51% in March. And I think people want to hear from the president of the United States.”
“It doesn’t have to be daily,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be for two hours. But in my view, it has to be.”
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Joe Biden, said Trump’s announcement shows “what he cares about most is not saving American lives, but getting more attention.”
“We’ve watched this exact scene from Donald Trump’s ongoing horror movie before when he hijacked the briefings and spread dangerous misinformation,” Bates said.
In addition to discussing medical developments, Trump also was expected to focus on his advocacy for schools to reopen for in-person education, after his threat to try to withhold federal funds from those that stick to remote education.
The president has also voiced frustration in recent days about his inability to hold a rally, blaming Democratic governors in battleground states for not waiving covid-19 restrictions on large gatherings.
“I want to get out there and do the rally as soon as we can,” Trump said Saturday on a call with Michigan supporters. “Between COVID and your governor’s restrictions, it really makes it very difficult, but we’ll be out there eventually. But in the meantime, we’re doing it telephonically.”
But there are few states that don’t have rising covid-19 cases or stringent restrictions.
Even in states where Republican governors may be willing to lift restrictions, campaign advisers worry about surging infection rates that could dissuade supporters from attending a rally. A rally slated for New Hampshire, which has a low covid-19 rate and a Republican governor, was scrapped in part because of fears of low attendance.
NEW RESTRICTIONS
Throughout the U.S., the number of cases has spiked in spots, stressing not just the economy but also its medical system.
State governments have been forced to borrow billions of dollars and slash costs by furloughing workers, delaying construction projects, cutting school aid and even closing highway rest areas. For many states the main hope for avoiding even deeper cuts is to get help from Congress.
In California, malls in San Francisco were ordered closed about a month after they were allowed to reopen.
Four months after the San Francisco Bay Area became the first place in the nation to issue broad stay-at-home orders to prevent the virus spread, only one Bay Area county is not on the state governor’s watch list for areas with rising infection and hospitalization rates.
In Chicago, the mayor imposed new restrictions on bars, gyms and personal services such as facials as health officials said the city again topped 200 daily cases on average. City officials attributed the rise primarily to young people going to bars and restaurants and Lake Michigan beaches.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, flew to Georgia on Monday to help deliver masks, test kits, gowns, face shields and hand sanitizer in Savannah. His visit offered support to a mayor who has been at-odds with Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s refusal to allow local governments to order people to wear masks.
Georgia’s cases continue to rise and Kemp has been embroiled in a public tussle with some local officials, including Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, over mandates on face coverings.
Cuomo said New York has to be interested in what’s happening in other parts of the country because infected people from other states are likely to spread virus cases in New York. He pledged to help Savannah set up two new public testing sites aimed at lower-income people, and said he would share contact tracing expertise.
In Florida, where nearly 9,500 people were hospitalized as of Monday, just 18% of its ICU units were available.
The number of confirmed global virus deaths has risen more than 608,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The United States tops the list with nearly 141,000 deaths, followed by more than 80,000 in Brazil.
The number of confirmed infections worldwide has passed 14.6 million, with 3.8 million in the United States and more than 2.1 million in Brazil. Experts believe the pandemic’s true toll is much higher because of testing shortages and data collection issues.
VACCINE RESULTS
The virus also has led to political rancor around the globe. European Union leaders have been fighting over an unprecedented $2.1 trillion EU budget and coronavirus recovery fund. The prolonged debates have been marked by walkouts, fist slamming and insults.
The pandemic has sent the EU into a tailspin, killing around 135,000 of its citizens and plunging its economy into an estimated contraction of 8.3% this year.
There was a glimmer of hope on the medical front with scientists at Oxford University saying their experimental coronavirus vaccine has shown in an early trial to prompt a protective immune response in hundreds of people.
British researchers first began testing the vaccine in April in about 1,000 people, half of whom got the experimental vaccine. Such early trials are designed to evaluate safety and see what kind of immune response was provoked, but can’t tell if the vaccine truly protects.
In research published Monday in the journal Lancet, scientists said that they found their experimental covid-19 vaccine produced a dual immune response in people ages 18 to 55 that lasted at least two months after they were immunized.
“We are seeing good immune response in almost everybody,” said Dr. Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University. “What this vaccine does particularly well is trigger both arms of the immune system,” he said.
The head of emergencies at the World Health Organization hailed the results as “good news,” but warned “there’s a long way to go.”
“We now need to move into larger scale real-world trials,” Dr. Michael Ryan told reporters in Geneva.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Jonathan Lemire, Jill Colvin, Aamer Madhani, Maria Cheng, Lauran Neergaard, Jamey Keaten Lisa Marie Pane, Kelli Kennedy, Ed White and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Chris Megerian and Eli Stokols of the Los Angeles Times.