Trump says governors ‘should open up’ states despite a DOZEN hitting record numbers of coronavirus cases
PRESIDENT Donald Trump said certain governors should be “opening up” states, even as a dozen hit new coronavirus case records over the past week.
The president made the comments during a visit to a biotech facility in North Carolina on Monday researching a coronavirus vaccine.
President Trump toured the FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies Innovation Center, which is reportedly manufacturing a component of a vaccine candidate developed by another company, Novavax.
In a press conference held at the event, Trump assured reporters that he believed Operation Warp Speed – which aims to create 300million doses of a vaccine by 2021 – would yield a safe and effective immunization “in record time.”
The president also said that the number of new coronavirus cases is trending in the right direction, and that he believes “a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening.”
These comments come despite the fact that a dozen states across the country had record weeks when it comes to new cases, and the numbers indicate that the virus is heading north.
There have been 4.2million cases of COVID-19 recorded in the US to date, and 147,000 Americans have died.
The number of new cases in states that have experienced recent surges — including Texas, California, Arizona and Florida — appear to be plateauing.
However, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii and Wyoming all broke seven-day records for new cases over the past week.
Also, Florida on Sunday became the second state, after California, to overtake New York — the original epicenter of the virus in the US — in the number of total COVID-19 cases, according to The Daily Mail.
Still, Trump’s Monday appearance and press conference seemed to be all about hope.
He assured reporters that “tremendous progress” has been made on a vaccine — and that the US will be in “good shape” by the end of the year.
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For effective therapies to treat the virus, the president said, “I think even sooner.”
The drug currently being worked on at the facility Trump visited is reportedly already in Phase 1 trials and Novavax plans to move to a larger Phase 2 study next month, The News & Observer reported.
The final phase would then take place in the fall.