Pence: ‘No question’ virus will spread
William Cummings
Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that it’s certain that additional people in the United States will contract the new coronavirus spreading rapidly across the globe, but he said the risk to the average American remains low, and the government is doing “everything possible to prevent the spread.”
“There will be more cases. There’s no question,” Pence said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” But he said “the vast majority of any American that would contract a coronavirus will be treated, they will recover.”
President Donald Trump put Pence in charge of a task force charged with coordinating the government’s response to the outbreak. Pence said the administration was taking “a whole-ofgovernment approach.”
“I’ll have one of the most renowned experts in infectious diseases literally joining my staff in the West Wing tomorrow. We’re going to bring the best scientific minds, experts together,” Pence said. “We’re going to work every day to, to contain this disease, to treat those that are contracted.
“I’m very confident we’re ready,” he said. “I know that we’ll get through this.”
Globally, there have been more than 86,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection and nearly 3,000 deaths from
COVID-19, the disease it causes, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering. In the U.S., there have been 71 confirmed cases and the first death, a man in Washington state.
“It’s a tragic loss, and the man passed away,” Pence said. “He was an individual we believe in his late 50s that, that also had some other high-risk factors, but it doesn’t take away from the tragedy.”
Pence said that of the confirmed cases in the U.S., “the majority of them are recovering well,” and “four remain in serious condition.”
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Heath and Human Services
Secretary Alex Azar said the man who died of the illness had been living in a nursing home where there have been additional cases.
“At this point we do not know how this gentleman contracted the illness,” Azar said. He said the man died in a hospital where “the nursing home sends patients.”
Azar also said the virus will spread. “We’ve been very clear from the outset we’re going to have more cases here in the United States in spite of the president’s aggressive efforts at containment. We’ll see more cases. We’ll see some forms of community spreading,” he said.
“But the risk to any individual American remains low. Thanks to the efforts the president has taken, they stay low. We’re working to keep it that way,” Azar said. “But things can change rapidly.”
Pence and Azar praised the president’s response to the virus and his decision to restrict travel from countries where the outbreak has been widespread. But critics have said the administration was slow to provide the needed resources and accused the president of initially trying to downplay the severity of the outbreak.
Azar said Trump was “trying to keep balance in messaging so that the American people don’t engage in unwarranted panic.”