Trump claims "perfectly coordinated" response to coronavirus threat
President Donald Trump defended on Sunday the “perfectly coordinated” response of the United States to the new coronavirus amid strong criticism for health cuts and strategic errors that have failed to stop its rapid spread.
The virus reached 30 states in the United States, on the weekend killing at least 21 people, while Washington DC announced its first case on Saturday and millions of people in California, New York and more recently Oregon are under a state of emergency.
Trump, accused of delivering wrong information about the outbreak, blamed the media in a tweet early in the morning for trying to make his government “look bad” as criticism increased for the nearly 500 cases registered.
“We have a perfectly coordinated and adjusted plan in the White House for our attack against the coronavirus,” he tweeted.
“We act very early to close borders in certain areas, which was a godsend. The vice president is doing a great job. Fake news media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!”
But Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, criticized Trump’s messages about the outbreak. The president “has not communicated the way I would do it, and in the way I would like him to do it,” he told NBC.
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, said federal health authorities had been “taken by surprise” and had blocked the individual ability of states to respond.
“His messages are everywhere, frankly,” he told Fox News.
Trump has been strongly criticized for repeatedly contradicting the advice of his administration’s experts in his public pronouncements on the coronavirus.
Trump has minimized the threat posed by the epidemic, which has killed more than 3,500 people since it emerged in China, suggesting that the cases were “decreasing substantially, not rising.” On the weekend the death toll in Italy surged by 133, forcing the government to take drastic containment action.
He also falsely promised that a vaccine would soon be available and assured, without evidence, that the official estimate of the mortality rate was “false.”
Since the beginning of February, the Trump administration has focused on blocking travel from China and imposing quarantines in an effort to keep the virus out of the United States.
Epidemiologists say that the initial containment effort may have delayed the arrival of the virus, but accuse the White House of wasting time with a strategy rather linked to political narrative rather than internal preparation.
