The United States has passed the peak on new coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump said Wednesday, adding this has put the country in a very strong position to finalize new guidelines on social distancing.
More than 6.3 lakh Americans have tested positive for Covid-19 so far and total fatalities as on Wednesday were nearly 28,000, the highest for any country in the world.
“The battle continues, but the data suggest that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases. Hopefully, that will continue, and we will continue to make great progress,” Trump told reporters at his daily White House news conference on coronavirus.
These encouraging developments, he said, has put the US in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country. The new social mitigation measures, he said, would be announced Thursday.
Dr Deborah Brix, a member of the White House Task Force on coronavirus, said that over the last five or six days there has been decline in new cases across the country. “This has been very reassuring for us. At the same time, we know that mortality and the fatalities that we are facing across the United States continue,” she said.
Nine States have less than 1000 cases and less than 30 new cases per day. Some states like California and Washington State, Oregon never really had a peak because of so much work that their populations did to decrease and keep the new cases down, she said.
Two States, Rhode Island and Providence are in a unique situation, she said. First, they had increasing cases from the New York City area and now they have new increasing cases from the Boston area. They are caught between two incredible hotspots in the country, she said
In total, through all channels, the federal government has developed and delivered 39.4 million N95 masks, 431 million gloves, 57 million surgical masks and 10.2 million gowns. It ordered 500 million masks and they will be coming shortly and have distributed 100 million masks, he said.
Trump said his administration is using every available authority to accelerate the development, study and develop therapies and treatments. “Ultimately, what we want to come up with is a safe vaccine, but frankly, the therapies to me are the most important because it takes care of people right now,” he said.
