A senior administration official said only that while testing was not necessary, Mr. Trump “requested the test, and it was his decision to make his personal medical test public.”
Mr. Trump’s test took many officials by surprise. Vice President Mike Pence, according to a senior administration official, learned only on Saturday morning that Mr. Trump had been tested. At the news conference, Mr. Pence was left to handle questions about the president’s decision, some of which he did not appear to know how to answer.
Mr. Pence also indicated that he might soon follow the president’s lead. “I’m going to speak immediately after this press conference with the White House physician’s office,” he told reporters. The physician, he said, had previously advised him that he did not need testing.
Mr. Trump, who sees strength as the most important quality someone can project, has often equated illness with weakness. Over the past week, he has been resisting testing, disregarding the advice of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has recommended tests and self-quarantine for anyone who had stood next to someone who had tested positive.
Despite having the imprimatur of the highest level of American government, Dr. Conley’s decision not to recommend a test for Mr. Trump, or any sort of isolation, was at odds with the advice of other physicians, as well as medical experts on the administration’s own coronavirus task force.
The standard protocol is to ask people exposed to a known coronavirus case to stay home and monitor their own health, refraining from their regular activities for 14 days and being tested if they develop symptoms, said Dr. Thomas M. File Jr., the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
As a head of state leading the nation through a turbulent time, the president has a singular responsibility to safeguard his health, said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. By letting a week go by before agreeing to a test, Mr. Gostin said, Mr. Trump “gives exactly the wrong message to the public, and puts himself and his cabinet at risk.”
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday said the government is considering domestic travel restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic and added United Kingdom and Irelandto the Europe travel restrictions that went into effect late Friday.
They did not offer specifics ondomestic flight restrictions but Trump said earlier this week that they would be considered if “an area gets a little bit out of control” in terms of coronavirus cases.
Pence said at a White House news conference Saturday that a “broad range of measures” are under consideration.
“But no decisions have been made yet,” he said.
Asked if people should be traveling, Trump recommended against it.
“If you don’t have to travel I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “We want this thing to end. We don’t want a lot of people getting infected.”
Extensive domestic flight restrictions would further cripple an already struggling US airline industry and lead to more flight cuts. Southwest Airlines, the nation’s largest domestic carrier, might face a disproportionate hit, though CEO Gary Kelly has already said the airline has seen a “9/11-like” drop in bookings even without serving Asia or Europe.
The talk of domestic travel restrictions comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday issued an unusual advisory on travel within the United States on its website. The headline: “Should I travel within the United States?”
The CDC said it doesn’t generally issue advisories or restrictions for travel within the United States but is doing so because cases of COVID-19 have been reported in many states and some areas are experiencing community spread.
“Crowded travel settings, like airports, may increase your risk of exposure to COVID-19, if there are other travelers with COVID-19. There are several things you should consider when deciding whether it is safe for you to travel.”
Travel guidelines and alerts are usually issued for international destinations. Shortly after the coronavirus outbreak made headlines in January, the CDC issued a level 3 travel health notice, its highest, advising against non-essential travel to China, and has since raised Europe, Iran, Europe and South Korea to those levels due to coronavirus spread.
The CDC now rates the US and other most other countries a level 2 under a broad global coronoavirus travel advisory. A level 2 alert means “practice enhanced precautions.”
New United Kingdom and Ireland restrictions
The United Kingdom and Ireland were excluded from the Europe travel ban announced earlier this week but have been added due to a spike in cases there.
The broadened ban means residents of the U.K. and Ireland will not be allowed to travel to the United States for 30 days beginning late Monday.
U.S. residents won’t be banned from flying to the United States but they will face airport screenings upon their return and will be asked to self quarantine for 14 days.
Officials said U.S. citizens in the U.K. or Ireland do not need to rush home ahead of the deadline because the ban does not apply to them.
“They will be allowed into the U.S.,” Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said.
In response to the broadened ban and the resulting falloff in travel demand, airlines are likely to sharply cut flights between the U.S. and London and Ireland. Delta and American Airlines, for example, suspended all flights between the United States and the 26 European countries covered by the initial ban.
Spain is the latest hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, with 1,500 new cases Saturday — half in the capital city of Madrid.
The skyrocketing number of infections has pushed Spain into the top five for the largest number of cases — in all, 5,753 confirmed infections and at least 133 deaths. The others on the list: China, Italy, Iran and South Korea.
The Spanish government expected to declare a national state of emergency Saturday, the BBC reported.
Residents in Madrid and northeast Catalonia woke up to empty streets after regional authorities closed down bars and restaurants and other non-essential commercial outlets Friday. A nationwide lockdown is also expected to try to contain the spread of the deadly virus, the Associated Press reported.
Also on Saturday, the Czech Republic government closed most stores and restaurants for 10 days. So far, the country has reported 141 cases.
Pharmacists wear face masks as a precaution against transmission of the coronavirus a day after the Government declared the state of alarm in Spain.Getty Images
The move echoes one in Italy to close all stores except supermarkets and pharmacies as Covid-19 ravages the nation’s health care system. At least 17,660 cases have been confirmed there, with at least 1,266 deaths.
And the UK is moving to ban mass gatherings, Reuters reported — a reversal for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has resisted the stringent measures adopted by other countries to slow the virus. The UK now has over 800 cases and eight deaths.
The leaders of the G7 nations will meet Monday to discuss the virus, French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted Friday. “Following my call with @realDonaldTrumpand all G7 leaders, we agreed to organize an extraordinary Leaders Summit by videoconference on Monday on Covid-19. We will coordinate research efforts on a vaccine and treatments, and work on an economic and financial response.”
In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered nearly everyone entering the country after midnight Sunday to self-isolate. Also, no cruise liners will be allowed to dock until June 30. The country is reporting six cases.
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday said the government is considering domestic travel restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic and added United Kingdom and Irelandto the Europe travel restrictions that went into effect late Friday.
They did not offer specifics ondomestic flight restrictions but Trump said earlier this week that they would be considered if “an area gets a little bit out of control” in terms of coronavirus cases.
Pence said at a White House news conference Saturday that a “broad range of measures” are under consideration.
“But no decisions have been made yet,” he said.
Asked if people should be traveling, Trump recommended against it.
“If you don’t have to travel I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “We want this thing to end. We don’t want a lot of people getting infected.”
New United Kingdom and Ireland restrictions
The United Kingdom and Ireland were excluded from the Europe travel ban announced earlier this week but have been added due to a spike in cases there.
The broadened ban means residents of the UK and Ireland will not be allowed to travel to the United States for 30 days beginning late Monday.
U.S. residents won’t be banned from flying to the United States but they will face airport screenings upon their return and will be asked to self quarantine for 14 days.
Officials said U.S. citizens in the UK or Ireland do not need to rush home ahead of the deadline because the ban does not apply to them.
“They will be allowed into the US,” Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said.
In response to the broadened ban and the resulting falloff in travel demand, airlines are likely to sharply cut flights between the US and London and Ireland. Delta and American Airlines, for example, suspended all flights between the United States and the 26 European countries covered by the initial ban.
It began in April 2018 — more than a year and a half before the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease it causes, Covid-19, sickened enough people in China that authorities realized they were dealing with a new disease.
The Trump administration, with John Bolton newly at the helm of the White House National Security Council, began dismantling the team in charge of pandemic response, firing its leadership and disbanding the team in spring 2018.
The cuts, coupled with the administration’s repeated calls to cut the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health agencies, made it clear that the Trump administration wasn’t prioritizing the federal government’s ability to respond to disease outbreaks.
That lack of attention to preparedness, experts say, now helps explain why the Trump administration has botched its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Workers in protective suits wait for people to be tested for coronavirus as they arrive at a drive-through mobile testing center at Glen Island Park in New Rochelle, New York on March 13, 2020. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images
The administration has in recent days taken steps to combat criticisms about its slow and muddled response to the coronavirus, with Trump giving a televised Oval Office address on Wednesday and declaring a national emergency on Friday. But experts say that the damage has been done: The federal government is only now playing catch-up, as thousands of new cases of coronavirus are confirmed and the death toll steadily increases every day.
That failure is most abundantly clear in testing. To date, the US has tested a fraction of the people than even countries with much smaller outbreaks. Several weeks after the first community transmission within the US, the country has tested more than 16,000 people as of March 13, according to the Covid Tracking Project. By comparison, South Korea had tested more than 66,000 people within a week of its first case of community transmission.
Testing is crucial to slowing epidemics. First, it lets public health officials identify sick people and subsequently isolate them. Second, they can trace that sick person’s recent contacts to make sure those people aren’t sick and to get them to quarantine as well. It’s one of the best policy tools we have for an outbreak like this.
Christina Animashaun/Vox
It’s also something that the federal government has done well before — recently, with H1N1 and Zika. “It’s been surprising to me that the administration’s had a hard time executing on some of these things,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told me.
But it’s the kind of thing that the Trump administration has screwed up, while instead trying to downplay the threat of Covid-19. Trump himself has tweeted comparisons of Covid-19 to the common flu — which Jha describes as “really unhelpful,” because the novel coronavirus appears to be much worse. Trump also called concerns about the virus a “hoax.” He said on national television that, based on nothing more than a self-admitted “hunch,” the death rate of the disease is much lower than public health officials projected.
And Trump has rejected any accountability for the botched testing process: “I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said on Friday.
Jha described the Trump administration’s messaging so far as “deeply disturbing,” adding that it’s “left the country far less prepared than it needs to be for what is a very substantial challenge ahead.”
It’s a playbook that has previously worked for Trump, who successfully, at least politically, fended off concerns about his handling of Hurricane Maria, the opioid epidemic, and a host of self-inflicted crises from his travel ban to the crisis at the US-Mexico border. This time, as people are getting sick and dying, and millions of Americans worry the same could happen to them, Trump’s strategy of denial and downplaying isn’t working (so far).
What it has done, instead, is left the Trump administration unprepared for the challenge ahead, whether it’s in the failure on testing or the Trump administration’s inability to calm the public and markets as the novel coronavirus continues to spread. And all of this can be traced back to the Trump administration’s decision in the spring of 2018 to deprioritize the federal government’s ability to respond to pandemics.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s failures began years ago
When Bolton became Trump’s national security adviser in 2018, he quickly moved to disband the White House National Security Council’s Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which former President Barack Obama set up after the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak to lead federal coordination and preparation for disease outbreaks.
In April 2018, Bolton fired Tom Bossert, then the homeland security adviser, who, the Washington Post reported, “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks.” Then, in May of that year, Bolton let go of the head of pandemic response, Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, and his global health security team. The team, the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, was never replaced.
Tom Bossert, then the homeland security adviser, was fired by John Bolton in 2018. Bossert had called for a strategy against pandemics.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
At the time, the Trump administration and Bolton argued that the cuts were needed to streamline the National Security Council.
But, according to experts, the work of a global health security team, or something like it, is crucial to responding to any disease outbreak. Since the federal government is sprawling and large, it helps to have centralized leadership in case of a crisis. That leadership could ensure all federal agencies are doing the most they can and working toward a single set of goals.
But it’s important to have this kind of agency set up before an outbreak. Setting up an agency takes time; it requires hiring staff, handing out tasks and expected workloads, creating internal policies, and so on. A preexisting agency is also going to have plans worked out before an outbreak, with likely contingencies in place for what to do. That’s why it was so important to have this agency in place even during years, like 2018, when disease pandemics didn’t seem like a nearby threat to everyone.
“The basic systems need to be in place for global, state, and local responses,” Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “When you don’t shore those up, you’re not starting from scratch, but you’re catching up every single time.”
The Trump administration has since put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of handling the coronavirus pandemic, building out a team that includes well-respected experts like Deborah Birx. But the problem is this is in reaction to the epidemic, instead of something that a preexisting agency within the administration was working on for years.
Even some officials within the Trump administration have voiced concern about the team’s dismantling. “It would be nice if the office was still there,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a congressional hearing. “We worked very well with that office.”
The cuts are part of Trump’s broader policy agenda, focused largely on trimming the size of the federal government. He has repeatedly proposed cuts to agencies, like the CDC and National Institutes of Health, on the front lines of the federal response to disease outbreaks. Trump’s most recent budget proposals asked for similar cuts — and the administration has stood by them.
Even without such cuts, experts and advocatesargue the US generally underfunds disease outbreak preparedness and public health programs more broadly. Further cuts just deepen the risks of pandemics.
By repeatedly undercutting outbreak preparedness, Jha said, the Trump administration signaled “to the government and all the agencies this is not a priority. And that means that even other agencies end up not putting as much attention and energy on it. So I think this has been a longstanding problem of the White House.”
Trump, for his part, has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a businessperson. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness should work. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told the Washington Post. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
The administration has been slow to react
Even after it became clear that the coronavirus outbreak was becoming a global threat in January, the Trump administration has been very slow to prepare and react. The common refrain among experts is that other countries’ actions, such as China’s draconian measures, gave the US a bit of time to do something, but the federal government has failed to get even the basics right in that allotted time.
That begins, first and foremost, with testing. But as report after report has confirmed, the US is doing a very bad job in this area — falling behind its developed peers in Europe and Asia. On social media, doctors regularlycomplain that they can’t obtain tests for patients even if the patients display symptoms.
Christina Animashaun/Vox
Not all of this is necessarily the Trump administration’s fault. When the CDC rolled out its tests, a component in them turned out to be faulty. That was unfortunate, but it put a big spotlight on the CDC’s decision to use its own test kit instead of test kits other countries have used, reportedly in an effort to create a more accurate test. Since then, as Olga Khazan explained at the Atlantic, the Trump administration has consistently failed to make things better, with reports of infighting making it harder for the administration to get its act together.
But this is exactly the kind of situation that proper preparedness, well, prepares federal agencies for. If the Trump administration had prioritized outbreak prevention before the coronavirus pandemic, it might have used the time prior to Covid-19 — or even January and February, when the global threat was increasingly clear — to establish contingencies in case something went wrong.
“These kinds of things are what you prepare for, why you do preparedness planning, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen,” Kates said. “Right now everyone’s playing catch-up to try to address these gaps, and every day matters. A good preparedness plan would be addressing that from the outset.”
This is, after all, something the federal government has done before for outbreaks, from H1N1 to Zika. A big difference from then to now is Trump is in charge.
A lab technician begins semi-automated testing for COVID-19 at Northwell Health Labs in Lake Success, New York on March 11, 2020.Andrew Theodorakis/Getty Images
Recognizing the criticisms, the Trump administration has promised to try to boost testing output, including a partnership with the private sector. But whether that actually leads to significant changes remains to be seen.
One of the problems is Trump has consistently downplayed the coronavirus, comparing it to the common flu and claiming that his administration is doing a “GREAT job” and keeping things under control. Even on Friday, when announcing his administration’s goal to get 5 million test kits out, Trump said, “I doubt we’ll need anywhere near that.”
Some of that may be political. Politico reporter Dan Diamond told NPR host Terry Gross that, based on his own reporting, Trump “did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that’s partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall.”
The administration more broadly seems to have underestimated the threat, requesting $2.5 billion in emergency funding for the crisis — a fraction of what both Democrats and Republicans said is necessary and ultimately passed.
Trump has taken some steps as the pandemic has worsened
What Trump has done is focus on travel restrictions, first against China and most recently against most of Europe. While this likely bought the US a little time with China, the Trump administration didn’t use that time properly.
And in the case of Europe, the restrictions will likely do little to nothing. There’s one simple reason for that, Kates told me: “The virus is already here.” Since the coronavirus is already spreading within communities, the concern is no longer the virus coming in from outside the US.
Travellers at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on March 13, 2020. President Trump announced a travel ban from European countries, which doesn’t address the spread of disease within the US.NurPhoto via Getty Images
Even conservatives have been critical of Trump’s response. The National Review editorial board wrote:
[Trump] resisted making the response to the epidemic a priority for as long as he could — refusing briefings, downplaying the problem, and wasting precious time. He has failed to properly empower his subordinates and refused to trust the information they provided him — often offering up unsubstantiated claims and figures from cable television instead. He has spoken about the crisis in crude political and personal terms. He has stood in the way of public understanding of the plausible course of the epidemic, trafficking instead in dismissive clichés. He has denied his administration’s missteps, making it more difficult to address them.
On Wednesday night, Trump appeared to finally confront the reality of the crisis in a televised statement from the Oval Office — acknowledging that the outbreak is now a pandemic and the damage that concerns about the virus are now doing to the economy.
But even then, he only promised a limited travel ban for most of Europe, which won’t address the spread of the disease within the US, and some economic relief measures. The speech included no new policy proposals for stopping the spread of the disease within the US.
The speech was also riddled with errors, leading the administration and others to later issue several corrections on the extent of the travel restrictions for Europe and exemptions health insurers are making to make coronavirus treatment more accessible.
Jha, for his part, was not allayed by Trump’s speech. “It was a distraction,” he said. “I think it made things significantly worse off. I don’t know any public health officials who felt even an iota of assurance coming out of that conversation.”
After the speech failed to calm the public or markets, Trump on Friday declared a national emergency, which will unlock billions of dollars in disaster aid to help combat the virus. The administration previously declared a public health emergency in January, but that didn’t tap into as much money as the new declaration under the 1988 Stafford Act — which is typically used for natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes — will allow.
Other Trump policies could impact the pandemic
In the background of all of this, the Trump administration has continued to push for several policies that, while not obviously related to the coronavirus, experts caution could have a negative impact on the pandemic.
For one, Trump has continued pushing for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, as well as efforts to reel back Medicaid with work requirements. With the outbreak growing, the US’s lack of universal health care has become an even more obvious problem: If people can’t get testing, they’re obviously less likely to find out they have Covid-19 and take precautions to avoid spreading the virus. If they can’t get treatment in case of complications, they’re more likely to suffer, potentially spread the disease, and die.
The Trump administration has continued to push for policies that could have a negative impact on the epidemic, including repealing the Affordable Care Act and kicking people off food stamps.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The Trump administration seems aware of this problem, working with insurers to eliminate copayments for testing, stop surprise medical billing, and help expand coverage related to the coronavirus. But in many ways, the administration is working against problems that it’s also helping create by pushing to worsen access to health care.
The pandemic is “bringing to the fore the underlying challenges that we have in our health and social support system in the United States,” Kates said.
Another example: The administration has pushed forward on measures that will kick people off food stamps. This will not only lead people to suffer if they lose their jobs as a result of a coronavirus-caused recession, but it could lead to sick people going to work and spreading the disease, because they won’t have a safety net if they don’t bring in a paycheck.
“If you ask people who are very marginal and barely had enough money to put food on the table, if you ask them to not work and therefore not get paid, and choose between that and having to go to work and put themselves or others at risk, that’s a terrible choice,” Jha said. “And a lot of people are going to make ‘the wrong choice,’ and you’d understand why. This is not about just helping people economically; this is about fighting the virus.”
The Trump administration, for its part, appears to understand part of the problem here. Trump has supported House Democrats’ efforts to create an emergency paid leave program and boost food aid, at least for the duration of the Covid-19 outbreak and for the people affected. But his administration has also stuck to its other efforts to kick people off food stamps.
Experts also pointed to the “public charge” rule, which effectively discourages immigrants from seeking public services, including health care, by threatening their immigration status if they are “likely to be a public charge” by relying on those services.
“With an outbreak, that’s a recipe for potential disaster,” Kates argued. “You don’t want individuals to feel frightened about seeking the care that they need because they’re fearful of not being able to stay in the country or with their families. That would threaten the public’s health.”
Even if the administration doesn’t want to permanently back off these policy proposals, it could, Kates said, consider a moratorium. But so far, that’s not happening.
That reflects the lack of priority that the Trump administration has given to the coronavirus pandemic, even as it rapidly worsens. If stopping the pandemic was the top priority, Trump could halt, even just temporarily, policies that could potentially worsen the crisis. But he’s not.
Donald Trump has announced new measures to tackle the coronavirus crisis, including expanding the existing US travel ban to travelers from the UK and Ireland.
In a lunchtime briefing at the White House, the president also confirmed he had taken a test for the virus himself, although the result was not yet available.
In a statement on Friday Trump’s physician, Dr Sean Conley, said there was no need to quarantine the president or implement a test. Trump’s encounter with Bolsonaro aide Fabio Wajngarten was “low risk”, the doctor said, adding that another Mar-a-Lago guest who has tested positive also interacted with the president.
On Saturday, Trump told the media he had taken a test after all. His daughter Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser, entered self-isolation on Friday after meeting an Australian politician later revealed to have tested positive.
News of Trump’s test followed days of controversy highlighted by his continuing to shake hands with people, even as official advice recommended “social distancing”.
“It becomes a habit. People walk up to me, they shake hands, it’s kind of a natural reflex,” Trump said. “Shaking hands is not a great thing to be doing right now, I tend to agree.”
Trump said he took his test on Friday night and would await the result for “two days, whatever it is”.
“We’re looking at it very seriously because they’ve had a little bit of activity, unfortunately,” he said. “We have already looked at it actually. That is going to be announced.”
The vice-president, Mike Pence, duly announced that the UK and Ireland would be subject to the ban from midnight US eastern time on Monday.
Trump also welcomed legislation passed by the US House that will help fund paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, free testing and other measures to help Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
“It will provide strong support for American families and communities in dealing with the coronavirus,” Trump said.
Nonetheless, the administration’s response to the outbreak remains subject to extensive criticism, particularly after a press conference on Friday.
In the White House Rose Garden, Trump announced a national emergency, paving the way for billions of dollars to be made accessible to federal and state authorities attempting to slow the fast-moving pandemic.
“It opened up avenues we would never be able to open up without it,” he said at the Saturday briefing. “It will make more than $50bn available to us in disaster relief funds. And that’s available for states, territories and local governments.
“A lot of people are benefiting from it.”
But on Friday he also announced a new self-diagnosis website created by Google, only for the tech giant to deny the project was on anything like the scale outlined; said “I don’t take responsibility at all” when asked why the US lagged behind other countries in testing; and reacted angrily to a question about why a White House office for pandemic response was closed in 2018.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC), there are 1,629 cases of coronavirus in the US with 41 deaths, and 46 states and the District of Columbia have reported infections. Other estimates, including Trump’s on Saturday, are higher.
Concerns have been expressed that the US does not have enough hospital beds or ventilators to deal with the crisis. As many as 20% of coronavirus infections could require patients to receive mechanical ventilation. If estimates of more than 1m infections prove accurate, there could me more than 200,000 such severe cases.
According to a Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security study based on data from 2010, US acute care hospitals own about 62,000 full-featured mechanical ventilators. The study, published in February, reported an additional 98,000 ventilators that can provide basic function.
The CDC Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) has an estimated 8,900 ventilators that can be shipped within a day or so. At the White House on Friday, Trump said: “We have ordered a large number of respirators just in case.”
Across the US, authorities have declared emergencies, closed schools and restricted public gatherings. In New York City the largest public school system in the US remains open, a key source of support for millions. Pressure on the mayor, Bill de Blasio, is increasing.
New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced on Saturday that the state had recorded its first coronavirus fatality, an 82-year-old woman with pre-existing medical issues. Cuomo said the state had 524 confirmed cases, 117 hospitalised, and said officials believe thousands have the virus.
On Capitol Hill, the relief bill passed just before 1am, after two days of talks between the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Agreement came after Trump signaled his support for Democrat-drafted measures.
Pelosi thanked Democrats for their patience. Trump and the speaker, who publicly clashed at the State of the Union address in January, never communicated directly on coronavirus relief and Trump did not thank Pelosi directly at the White House on Saturday.
The legislation now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. It ensures free testing for those who need it while increasing access to benefits including family medical leave, paid sick leave, unemployment insurance, spending on health insurance for the poor and food programmes for children and the elderly.
On Friday, a federal judge blocked an administration attempt to force nearly 700,000 people off food stamps, a key benefit for poor Americans. In her ruling, district court judge Beryl Howell cited the coronavirus outbreak and said the attempted action was capricious, arbitrary and probably unlawful.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump administration reached a last-minute deal Friday on a sweeping coronavirus aid package that will provide free testing for all Americans.
The “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” will guarantee free tests for all Americans, including the uninsured, and provide two weeks of paid sick leave for those affected by the health crisis, Pelosi said.
It will also provide up to three months of paid family and medical leave and strengthened unemployment Insurance for those facing layoffs amid the health and economic crisis.
The aid package will also strengthen food banks, seniors’ meals and the food stamps program, known as SNAP.
Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had been locked in feverish negotiations as the crisis rapidly escalated — speaking up to seven times a day — and by Friday morning, senior Democrats were confident the package would pass the House by the end of the day.
“We don’t think the Democrats are giving enough,” Trump told reporters.
“We are negotiating. We thought we had something, but all of a sudden they didn’t agree to certain things that they agreed to,” he added, without specifying the sticking point.
The president has repeatedly demanded a payroll tax cut be included in the bill, something that has been met with tepid support from within his own administration.
“We could have something but we don’t think they are giving enough. They are not doing what is right for the country,” he concluded.
Pelosi was bullish about passing the bill on Friday, even though it now languishes until Monday when the Senate returns from a break, calling the health outbreak a “grave and accelerating challenge.”
The new bill comes after Trump last week signed into law a separate $8.3 billion in emergency aid for states and local authorities to combat the spread of the virus.
As of Friday evening, the COVID-19 outbreak has killed 41 people in the U.S. and infected another 1,629, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lawmakers have been under immense pressure to pass a bipartisan bill which would provide a financial safety net to Americans confronting the deadly disease while also making tests available to all Americans who need one.
“The three most important parts of this bill are testing, testing, testing,” Pelosi said.
Doctors around the country have been crying out for more tests, which are in short supply — one White House official conceding on Wednesday that the government was “failing” when it came to testing.
Chinese official blames U.S. for COVID-19; reaction on ‘The Five.’
The panel on “The Five” responded Friday to a Chinese government official who took to Twitter to question whether the U.S. Army “brought the epidemic [of the coronavirus] to Wuhan.”
Lijian Zhao, whose Twitter profile identifies him as the “spokesperson and deputy director-general” of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s information department, posted a clip of Rep. Harley Rouda, D-Calif., and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield talking about the virus.
“CDC was caught on the spot,” Zhao claims. “When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe[s] us an explanation!”
“The Five” host Jesse Watters called the claim a “bogus conspiracy theory.”
He said the U.S. State Department summoned the Chinese ambassador after Zhao’s comments went public.
“[State] gave him a little tongue lashing about some of these things that have come out of the country’s foreign ministry about America starting the virus in Wuhan,” Watters said.
Panelist Shannon Bream called the claim “cuckoo,” adding that another concern of hers is threats from Beijing on the Sino-American supply chain as the virus intensifies.
With much of the components of American pharmaceuticals being made in China, the nation has become dependent on their output, the panel said.
“The fact that they are now openly threatening us like we can shut this down and you would be in the stew of the Wuhan virus as they are calling it. I think China has got to settle,” Bream said.
Watters praised Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for taking a strong stand against that idea during a Senate hearing.
“We are dangerously reliant particularly on China for the production of critical goods. That includes goods that I have already outlined that are needed to fight the coronavirus. And I think we rely on far more goods than we know,” Rubio said.
Juan Williams agreed with Watters that Rubio’s point is very important.
As the coronavirus continues to spread in the U.S., more and more businesses are sending employees off to work from home. Public schools are closing, universities are holding classes online, major events are getting canceled and cultural institutions are shutting their doors. Even Disney World and Disneyland are set to close. The disruption of daily life for many Americans is real and significant — but so are the potential life-saving benefits.
It’s all part of an effort to do what epidemiologists call flattening the curve of the pandemic. The idea is to increase social distancing in order to slow the spread of the virus, so that you don’t get a huge spike in the number of people getting sick all at once. If that were to happen, there wouldn’t be enough hospital beds or mechanical ventilators for everyone who needs them, and the U.S. hospital system would be overwhelmed. That’s already happening in Italy.
“If you think of our health care system as a subway car and it’s rush hour, and everybody wants to get on the car once, they start piling up at the door,” says Drew Harris, a population health researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “They pile up on the platform. There’s just not enough room in the car to take care of everybody, to accommodate everybody. That’s the system that is overwhelmed. It just can’t handle it, and people wind up not getting services that they need.”
Harris is the creator of a widely shared graphic visualizing just why it is so important to flatten the curve of a pandemic, including the current one — we’ve reproduced his graphic at the top of this page. The tan curve represents a scenario where the U.S. hospital system becomes inundated with coronavirus patients.
However, Harris says, if we can delay the spread of the virus so that new cases aren’t popping up all at once, but rather, over the course of weeks or months, “then the system can adjust and accommodate all the people who are possibly going to get sick and possibly need hospital care.” People would still get infected, he notes, but at a rate the healthcare system could actually keep up with — a scenario represented by the more gently sloped blue curve on the graph.
These two curves have already played out in the U.S. in an earlier age — during the 1918 flu pandemic. Research has shown that the faster authorities moved to implement the kinds of social distancing measures designed to slow the transmission of disease, the more lives were saved. And the history of two U.S. cities — Philadelphia and St. Louis — illustrates just how big a difference those measures can make.
In Philadelphia, Harris notes, city officials ignored warnings from infectious disease experts that the flu was already circulating in their community. Instead, they moved forward with a massive parade in support of World War I bonds that brought hundreds of thousands of people together. “Within 48, 72 hours, thousands of people around the Philadelphia region started to die,” Harris notes. Within 6 months, about 16,000 people had died.
Meanwhile, officials in St. Louis, Mo., had a vastly different public health response. Within two days of the first reported cases, the city quickly moved to social isolation strategies, according to a 2007 analysis.
“They really tried to limit the travel of people and implement public health 101 — isolating and treating the sick, quarantining the people who have been exposed to disease, closing the schools, encouraging social distancing of people,” Harris says. “And, of course, encouraging hand hygiene and other individual activities.”
As a result, St. Louis suffered just one-eighth of the flu fatalities that Philadelphia saw, according to that 2007 research. But if St. Louis had waited another week or two to act, it might have suffered a similar fate as Philadelphia, the researchers concluded.
At the time the 2007 research was released, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading adviser in the U.S. response to COVID-19, said the evidence was clear that early intervention was critical in the midst of the 1918 pandemic.
As for just how big the current coronavirus pandemic will be in America? “It is going to be totally dependent upon how we respond to it,” Fauci told Congress earlier this week.
“I can’t give you a number,” he said. “I can’t give you a realistic number until we put into [it] the factor of how we respond. If we’re complacent and don’t do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions.”
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“We prepare for all types of occurrences, from the God-forbid active shooter to the typical water main break, to the ice day and snow day,” he said. “I cannot think of something that has been at such a scale.”
By Thursday Mr. Lubelfeld had already started preparations, reaching out to the local food pantry, library and township to ensure that the 25 percent of students who received federally subsidized meals would have food. The district had purchased three-month subscriptions for internet hot spots for 50 families.
Still, when he walked in to the emergency school board meeting he had called that evening, Mr. Lubelfeld was unsure — until he faced impassioned parents and frustrated board members.
“Now is not the time for complacency; it is the time for decisive action,” pleaded Mia Levy, a mother of two students who is also a doctor and the director of the Rush University Cancer Center. “Your actions will save lives.”
Daniel Wertheimer, a father who had already pulled his children out of school, told Mr. Lubelfeld that “because you’re keeping the schools open, there’s going to be folks — elderly, our age — that probably die, and that decision is on you.”
Bennett W. Lasko, the president of the school board, expressed frustration that the district was left to make the decision alone, citing “imperfect information, inconsistent from one authority to another.”
“We’re volunteers up here, and we’re a reasonably smart group of people, but we’re not able to assess the pros and cons of closing schools,” he said.
“One of my daughters was in precautionary quarantine,” Cuomo said, adding that she had contact with someone who had been to a COVID-19 hotspot. “That’s everything to me. That’s why I get up in the morning. How can I protect my daughter.”
Trump gave his own description of the deal designed in part to assuage GOP concerns. He wrote that it “will follow my direction for free CoronaVirus tests, and paid sick leave for our impacted American workers.”
The president also said he directed Mnuchin and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia “to issue regulations that will provide flexibility so that in no way will Small Businesses be hurt.”
The overarching provisions described by Pelosi largely matched the developing agreement she described Thursday night. Pelosi and Mnuchin had 13 separate conversations throughout the day, the last at 5:48 p.m. ET after Trump’s Rose Garden news conference, according to Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.
In a note to colleagues Friday night, Pelosi said that “because it was essential for us to have legislation pass the House by this weekend, it required intense and constant negotiations for what could have been an elusive agreement.” Not only did the House want to respond quickly to the crisis, but also it has a scheduled recess next week.
The spreading coronavirus crisis has led to fears of widespread economic disruption and workers, either sick or laid off by businesses battered by the outbreak, unable to make ends meet. Major U.S. stock indexes all fell at least 8% this week despite a spike on Friday.
The U.S. has more than 1,700 cases of the coronavirus disease COVID-19, and at least 40 people have died from it, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The rapid spread of the coronavirus in other countries, and Trump’s public comments on its transmission here, have led to concerns about his administration’s ability to handle testing and the capacity of the U.S. health care system to treat patients.
The outbreak has upended American life. States and cities have suspended school or banned large gatherings.
And Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that “the system is not really geared to what we need right now” in and called the testing system “a failing.”
But Trump, who spent weeks downplaying coronavirus before declaring it a national emergency on Friday, argued that the health care system was not designed for an outbreak on the scale of coronavirus, “with the kind of numbers that we are talking about.”
The president kept his criticism lighter and more forward-looking at first, declaring that his administration is “leaving a very indelible print in the future in case something like this happens again.”
“That’s not the fault of anybody — and frankly the old system worked very well for smaller numbers, much smaller numbers but not for these kind of numbers,” he added.
But then Fauci stepped up to the mic to clarify his position, arguing that the CDC’s testing system, “for what it was designed for, it worked very well,” and maintaining that an “embrace” of the private sector was necessary for testing at the kind of scale needed for the fast-spreading coronavirus.
Then, Trump began pointing fingers.
“If you go back — please, if you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. they didn’t do testing like this,” he interjected, referencing the 2009 H1N1 pandemic that sickened more than 60 million people between April 2009 and 2010. Trump asserted that the Obama administration “didn’t do testing” and that when “they started thinking about testing,” it was “far too late.”
He reiterated a claim made on Twitter earlier in the day, calling the Obama administration’s response to the swine flu outbreak “a very big failure,” though the H1N1’s fatality rate of .02 percent is much lower than the lowest fatality estimates for the coronavirus thus far.
Trump later got testy with another reporter who pressed him on whether he bore any responsibility for the surge in cases, noting that he’d disbanded the White House’s pandemic office.
Trump told the reporter, PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor — with whom he’s butted heads with in the past — that her inquiry was a “nasty question.”
After noting that his administration had quickly acted to restrict travel from China, where the coronavirus outbreak originated, the president said he personally was not responsible for dissolving the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which had been part of the National Security Council until his administration disbanded it and rolled its officials into another office.
President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci answered questions about coronavirus response in a Rose Garden news conference on Friday.
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci answered questions about coronavirus response in a Rose Garden news conference on Friday.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Updated at 10:16 p.m. ET
A day after his communications secretary went into quarantine after testing positive for coronavirus, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday moved swiftly to shoot down local news reports that he too had tested positive. That was good news for President Trump.
“Negative for COVID-19, the Honorable President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro,” the Brazilian president wrote on his official Twitter account. “DON’T BELIEVE IN THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA.”
Bolsonaro’s coronavirus test results were being watched closely in Washington, six days after the Brazilian leader dined at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with Trump, Vice President Pence, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Fabio Wajngarten, the coronavirus-infected Bolsonaro communications chief, had posed alongside Trump for a photo taken at the dinner.
Friday night Brazil said its charge d’affairs Nestor Forster, who was with Trump and Bolsonaro at the dinner, had also tested positive and had already been quarantining himself.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends in its coronavirus guidelines that people consider restricting their movements if they have been exposed to a confirmed case of COVID-19 but show no symptoms.
So far none of the federal officials who met with Brazil’s Bolsonaro and his infected communications secretary or Australia’s COVID-19 positive Dutton are known to have been infected.
Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., met at the Florida dinner with Bolsonaro and both said they would self-quarantine.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who met with Bolsonaro in Miami on Monday, announced Thursday he had chosen to self-quarantine.
On Friday, Suarez revealed he had tested positive for coronavirus and recommended that people take precautions if he had shaken their hand or sneezed near them.
Trump, however, has shown no inclination to isolate himself after his weekend encounter with Bolsonaro’s communications secretary.
“I take pictures and it lasts for literally seconds — I don’t know the gentleman that we’re talking about, I have no idea who he is,” Trump said Friday when asked about his contact with Wajngartner. “Now, I did sit with the president for probably two hours, but he’s tested negative, so that’s good.”
Trump said he did not need to isolate himself in the way other officials have after being with people infected with coronavirus because “I don’t have any of the symptoms.”
Asked by ABC News’ Cecilia Vega on Friday whether Trump should be self-monitoring or in isolation getting tested, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert at the National Institutes of Health, demurred.
“I leave that to the president’s White House physician who is an extremely competent individual who I know well,” Fauci said.
But when pressed on whether if he himself would get tested if he came into contact with someone who had tested positive, Fauci was somewhat more forthcoming.
“Likely I would, but I’m not sure. It depends on the circumstances,” Fauci said. “We should follow the guidelines of the CDC about when you are at a risk what you should do.”
That remark may have made an impact at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
As Fauci later on Friday stood alongside Trump at the White House, the president was asked if he was being selfish by not getting tested and potentially exposing others.
“Well, I didn’t say I wasn’t going to be tested,” Trump replied. Pressed on the point, Trump said, “Most likely, yeah. Most likely. Not for that reason, but because I think I will do it anyway.”
A few days earlier, Ivanka Trump, U.S. Attorney General William Barr and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf met in Washington with Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. On Friday Dutton, who had also met with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, announced he had tested positive for coronavirus.
“This morning I woke up with a temperature and a sore throat. I immediately contacted the Queensland Department of Health and was subsequently tested for COVID-19,” Dutton, who was hospitalized in Brisbane, wrote. “I feel fine and will provide an update in due course.”
While Trump said he planned to be tested “pretty soon,” his daughter appeared to be taking precautions after learning Australia’s Dutton had tested positive for coronavirus eight days after meeting with her.
“Exposures from the case were assessed and the White House Medical Unit confirmed, in accordance with CDC guidance, that Ivanka is exhibiting no symptoms and does not need to self-quarantine,” White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement. “She worked from home today out of an abundance of caution until guidance was given.”
On Thursday evening, two days after declaring in Miami that the coronavirus outbreak “is not all the mainstream media makes it out to be,” Brazil’s Bolsonaro delivered nationally broadcast remarks about the pandemic while wearing a protective mask.
“That coronavirus, it’s scary,” Bolsonaro, a hardline conservative with strong support from religious evangelicals, exclaimed before giving a hand-washing demonstration using a squirt of hand sanitizer. “We ask God that this problem quickly dissipates from this country, and that everyone gets back to normal life.”
And confirmation of his coronavirus infection comes at an awkward time for Australia’s Dutton, who last week was dismissing complaints of unsanitary conditions from some of the 240 Australians evacuated from China whom he had sent to remote Christmas Island for quarantine.
“I think frankly, overwhelmingly, except for one photo of one cockroach, most people are complimentary of what has happened,” he said last month.
“Shouldn’t you be quarantined on Christmas Island?” one wag on Twitter queried after Dutton became Australia’s first cabinet member to test positive for coronavirus.
President Donald Trump on Friday announced a new series of measures to combat the coronavirus and treat those who are affected, while pushing back on criticism that his administration was unprepared to confront the pandemic.
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump declared a national emergency that could free up $50 billion to help fight the pandemic and said that he was empowering the secretary of Health and Human Services to waive certain laws and regulations to ensure the virus can be contained and patients treated.
“To unleash the full power of the federal government … I am officially declaring a national emergency,” Trump said.
“Two very big words,” he added.
Trump said the action would “open up access” to up to $50 billion “for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.”
Flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other top federal officials and corporate executives from companies such as Walmart, Trump said that the ability to waive certain laws and regulations would allow for easier admission to nursing homes and end limits on the length of hospital stays and the number of beds available.
He announced that 1.4 million new tests for the coronavirus would be available next week and that 5 million would be available within the next month — although he added that “I doubt we’ll need that” quantity. He also said there were plans to allow “drive-thru” virus tests.
In an unusual and lengthy news conference, a parade of business leaders took turns speaking after Trump — before the president and other federal officials made additional key announcements related to the administration’s coronavirus response.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak
Trump shook hands with several of those business leaders as he introduced them at the lectern — a breach of best practices recommended by public health experts across the United States.
After the corporate leaders spoke, Trump and other officials finally announced additional measures to confront the pandemic, which included the waiving of interest on federal student loans and the purchase of “large quantities” of oil for the U.S. strategic oil reserve. Officials also said they would be offering guidance to suspend all visitations to nursing homes, with exceptions being made only for end-of-life situations.
Nevertheless, the stock market — which had in recent days fallen 20 percent from its latest high, delving formally to bear territory — reacted favorably to the announcement.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose steadily as Trump spoke and closed for the day up nearly 2,000 points, or 9.4 percent.
“Not for that reason, but because I think I will do it anyway,” Trump said, when questioned by a reporter about standing next to an aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at his Mar-a-Lago resort last weekend.
Trump had hinted Thursday that he was strongly considering taking emergency action, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he was thinking of invoking the Stafford Act to declare a national emergency.
A national emergency declaration from the president would effectively create access to billions in federal aid to help with the pandemic. Plans for the emergency declaration were first reported by Bloomberg News.
Under the Stafford Act, an “infectious disease emergency declaration” by the president would allow the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide disaster relief funding to state and local governments, as well as federal assistance to support the coronavirus response. The law allows the agency to circumvent legal barriers to more quickly distribute such aid.
Emergency declarations are most often used in the event of natural disasters, but can also be applied to disease outbreaks.
The president had tweeted earlier about the Friday press conference amid the rapid spread of the virus and as the White House has scrambled to craft a strategy to shift Trump’s response to the outbreak, which had been focused on downplaying the threat and accusing the media of creating undue concern.
Trump has come under increasing fire in recent weeks over his response to the outbreak while his administration weathered criticism for the lack of coronavirus testing being done compared with other countries.
Asked Friday at his press conference by NBC News’ Kristen Welker whether he should take responsibility for the failure to disseminate larger quantities of tests earlier, Trump declined.
As panic began to set in over the outbreak, Trump tried to quell the fears of Americans across the country by giving a speech from the Oval Office on Wednesday night. He announced that he would ban many foreign travelers from Europe for the next 30 days and offered a series of economic relief actions to help workers and companies deal with the outbreak. But his speech was met with swift pushback after he misstated several aspects of the policy and failed to propose any new action to combat the outbreak domestically.
Health officials in recent days have sounded the alarm, warning the public that the outbreak is likely to get worse. Many major public events, including all NBA, NHL, MLB and Major League Soccer preseason games and Broadway shows, have been canceled this week, and Thursday saw the Dow’s worst day since the 1987 crash.
Wall Street, however, rallied Friday, bouncing firmly back after lawmakers and the White House appeared close to finalizing an economic relief package to address the coronavirus pandemic.
A White House nurse prepares to administer the H1N1 vaccine to President Barack Obama at the White House on Dec. 20, 2009. On Friday, President Trump called the Obama administration’s response to that outbreak “a full scale disaster.”
The White House via Getty Images
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The White House via Getty Images
A White House nurse prepares to administer the H1N1 vaccine to President Barack Obama at the White House on Dec. 20, 2009. On Friday, President Trump called the Obama administration’s response to that outbreak “a full scale disaster.”
The White House via Getty Images
Updated at 5:39 p.m. ET
President Trump, widely criticized for his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, tried to shift blame Friday to his predecessor’s handling of a health crisis 11 years ago.
In a series of tweets Friday morning, Trump accused former President Barack Obama of making unspecified changes that “complicated” the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention’s testing system.
Trump falsely charged the Obama administration’s response to the H1N1 swine flu outbreak as a “full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now.”
…. Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!
Trump has, on numerous occasions, accused the Obama administration of implementing a rule change that complicated testing. However, no such rule was ever put in place, according to FactCheck.org.
Coronavirus testing has been a key point of criticism of the Trump administration, with testing only becoming widespread in the U.S. this week, and kits remain in limited supply.
Trump announced Friday in a tweet that “testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!”
He appeared to be referring to an announcement that the Department of Health and Human Services has awarded grants to two companies developing tests that can show results in under an hour. These tests, however, won’t be available for about six to 12 weeks.
The administration also appointed a federal coordinator to oversee testing.
In a news conference Friday afternoon, Deborah Birx, who has been tasked with helping the administration coordinate its response to the coronavirus, said there has been “intense effort” put into “bringing the availability of these quality coronaviral testing to the American people at unprecedented speed.”
“I understand that a lot of this behind-the-scenes action in the last couple of weeks was invisible to the press and the American people,” said Birx, who is an internationally recognized HIV/AIDS expert.
Trump also defended his administration’s actions on testing in the news conference.
Asked whether he took responsibility for the apparent lag in widespread testing, Trump said, “No, I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a — a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time.”
He again raised the comparison to swine flu, arguing, “They didn’t do testing like this.”
According to a CDC estimate, there were more than 60 million swine flu cases reported in the U.S. between April 2009 — when the disease was first detected in California — and April 2010, with more than 12,000 people dying.
The agency said the first case was reported on April 15, 2009, and the government declared H1N1 a public health emergency on the April 26. The first test to detect the new virus was approved by the FDA two days later. Shipments of the new CDC test began May 1.
The Trump campaign on Friday also lashed out at former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s potential opponent in the 2020 election, accusing him of showing “terrible judgment and incompetence in the face of public health issues.”
The campaign may have been referring to remarks Biden made in April 2009, when he said on NBC’s Today show, “I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now.” His comments appeared out of line with official recommendations at the time.
Canada has unveiled aggressive new measures to contain the coronavirus outbreak, shutting down parliament and advising against foreign travel, even as Justin Trudeau urged citizens to remain calm in a national address delivered from self-imposed quarantine.
“We have an outstanding, we have outstanding public health authorities who are doing an outstanding job. We will get through this together,” said the prime minister, who has been in self-isolation after his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday.
In his address on Friday, Trudeau said he remained symptom free. “Of course, [working from home] is an inconvenience and somewhat frustrating. We are all social beings after all,” he said. “But we have to do this because we have to protect our neighbours and our friends – especially our more vulnerable seniors and people with pre-existing conditions.”
Officials announced a raft of new measures including closing parliament for five weeks and redirecting incoming international flights to a small number of airports as part of enhanced screening measures. The government also announced it will ban cruise ships with 500 people from docking in the country’s ports until 1 July – but stopped short of closing the borders.
“Borders don’t stop travellers. Travellers find other ways into countries. Travellers become less honest,” said Patty Hajdu, the county’s health minister. “Canada’s approach from the very beginning has been to use science and evidence.”
Instead, the government has asked Canadians to avoid non-essential travel outside the country and to limit contact with crowds.
“Social distancing is an important contribution that everyone can make to our control efforts,” said Theresa Tam, the country’s chief public health officer. “This means avoiding crowded places and non-essential gatherings, considering shopping or taking public transport in off-peak hours and greeting one another with a wave or elbow instead of a handshake, kiss or hug.”
So far, Canada has conducted more than 15,000 tests and has 157 confirmed cases of the virus, most of which have been found in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, she said.
Despite the relatively low number of cases, the federal government and provinces have acted swiftly in recent days.
British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec have all banned events larger than 250 people. Ontario, the country’s most populous province, will close schools for two additional weeks following spring break, as will Quebec.
“The actions you take today will save lives,” Hajdu said. “This is a serious public health threat, and a crisis as well as an emergency.”
As the country prepares for a slowdown, driven by both the coronavirus and a plunge in oil prices, Trudeau said his government plans to green-light a wide-scale economic stimulus plan in the coming days.
“We are in the enviable position of having significant fiscal firepower available,” he said.
Alberta’s premier, Jason Kenny, has called on the federal government to announce a stimulus of at least C$20bn (US$14.3bn) – roughly 1% of the country’s gross domestic product – to offset the looming economic impact of the virus.
“We need to design policies that will really help liquidity and cashflow for businesses that are uniquely affected right now,” he said on Thursday.
The prime minister has not yet put a figure on the stimulus plan, but said the action will target Canadians who are most vulnerable to a downturn.
“No one should have to worry about paying rent, buying groceries, or additional childcare because of Covid-19. We will help Canadians financially.”
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