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A recent analysis by the Associated Press showed that thousands of Americans are getting sick from COVID-19, even as President Donald Trump urges getting employees back to work and reopening the economy.
AP’s reporting focused on a surge of infections in meatpacking and poultry-processing plants where employees have started to return for work.
But workers at the the White House also are testing positive for coronavirus, including one of Trump’s valets and Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary. The coronavirus infection spike in the West Wing unfolds as Trump’s push to reopen the country runs counter to the advice of his own administration’s health care experts.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, told the New York Times in an email that the country risked “needless suffering and death” if it reopened too soon:
“If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to: ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”
Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats alike have criticized the Trump administration’s response to the virus, focusing their scrutiny on efforts to expand COVID-19 testing nationwide. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney called out administration “testing czar” Adm. Brett Giroir for recently celebrating nearly 9 million coronavirus tests.
“I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever,” Romney said.
Giroir told the Senate that the U.S. could be performing at least 40 million to 50 million tests per month by September, which would work out to 1.3 million to 1.7 million tests per day. Harvard researchers say the United States must be doing 900,000 by this Friday in order to safely reopen.
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