*Trump coronavirus vaccine goal ‘amazingly ambitious’, Senate Republican says
News that three core members of the US pandemic task force were having to go into some degree of self-isolation could not come at a worse time for Donald Trump. The president is trying to project an image of confidence and resolution as he encourages states to reopen their economies, while his administration is proving unable to keep the virus at bay even within the White House.
The Coronavirus deaths have now risen to 79,528, according to latest figures published by Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed cases are also risen now to 1,329,799 while 216,169 people are said to have been recovered from the virus.
This is as the university’s counting put global cases so far at 4,116,767 with 282,872 deaths and 1,418,017 recoveries.
The White House is stepping up precautions to try to stem the spread of Covid-19 in the West Wing after Dr Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious diseases official, and two other senior leaders in the fight against Covid-19 began self-quarantining on Sunday, following positive tests for the virus among staff.
News that three core members of the US pandemic task force were having to go into some degree of self-isolation could not come at a worse time for Donald Trump. The president is trying to project an image of confidence and resolution as he encourages states to reopen their economies, while his administration is proving unable to keep the virus at bay even within the White House.
Fauci, 79, a calming face of the Trump administration’s otherwise chaotic pandemic response, has begun what is being described as “modified quarantine”, involving some work from home, after he had “low risk” contact with a White House staffer who tested positive.
He is joined by Dr Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, and Dr Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who have both gone into two weeks of isolation.
Fauci will still testify before a Senate committee next week but he will do so remotely.
The scramble to protect Trump from potential infection was prompted after two White House staffers tested positive. They included a US Navy officer who served as valet for the president, and the press spokeswoman for vice-president Mike Pence, Katie Miller, who is married to senior policy aide Stephen Miller.
A spokesman for Pence issued a statement on Sunday night in response to news reports claiming the vice-president was self-isolating, saying Pence was not in quarantine. Pence “has tested negative every single day and plans to be at the White House tomorrow,” the statement said.
The positive tests are reported to have caused alarm within the White House, given the cramped conditions in which officials work. The New York Times cited a senior official as saying Trump himself was “spooked” to learn that the valet, who on occasion serves him food, had not been wearing a mask.
Senior officials took to the Sunday talk shows to try to counter the impression of internal shambles around the president.
Larry Kudlow, the White House national economic council director, told ABC’s This Week the two positive tests were insignificant.
“In terms of the White House complex, which is an enormous place, at least 500 people, probably much more than that … those who have tested positive is still a small fraction,” he said.
Kevin Hassett, a special adviser to Trump on the pandemic, told CNN’s State of the Union extra precautions were being taken. Nobody was being allowed to have an audience with Trump, he emphasized, unless they had tested negative.
But Hassett said there was a degree of risk involved in working in the West Wing, given the age of the building and the working conditions. Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, he said it was “scary” going to work and that it would have been safer staying at home.
“The West Wing, even with all the testing in the world and the best medical team on Earth, is a relatively cramped place,” he said. “There are things that have to happen in that West Wing even though the building is a little old and poorly ventilated.”
The crop of infections in the White House poses the administration a problem not only in terms of keeping the president safe. It also provides an inconvenient framing to Trump’s efforts to come across as upbeat in the face of the contagion.
He has been encouraging states to reopen their economies, even though in many cases they are ill-prepared for the health challenges of doing so at a time when the virus is still on the rise. Trump has tried to appear in control by pointedly refusing to wear a mask in White House meetings, and even touring a mask-making factory in Arizona last week without carrying any protective gear.
The Associated Press reported that Trump chose not to wear a mask because it would “send the wrong message” and impact his re-election chances.
The latest data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the US now has more than 1.3m confirmed cases of Covid-19, almost a third of the global tally. There have been 78,855 recorded deaths in the US, although the real figure is likely to be considerably higher.
Trump is having to deal with further bad optics about his pandemic response, thanks to his predecessor, Barack Obama.
In a leaked call first reported by Yahoo News, Obama told former officials from his administration the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis had been “an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ … is operationalized in our government.”
Trump lashed back in a tweet on Sunday morning, claiming to be getting “great marks” for the handling of coronavirus.
He went on: “Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls – didn’t have a clue!”
Kudlow also hit back. He told ABC that “with all due respect to the former president … I really don’t want to get into a political back-and-forth here … I don’t know what he’s talking about”.
He added: “I don’t understand what President Obama is saying. It just sounds so darn political to me.”
Trump coronavirus vaccine goal ‘amazingly ambitious’
White House predictions about how the US economy might rebound from the coronavirus crisis and how quickly a vaccine might be rolled out came under question on Sunday.
The US will need more tests before schools can reopen later in the year, said Lamar Alexander, Republican chairman of the Senate health committee.
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Tennessee senator appeared to question the White House’s ability to meet a target of having 100 million vaccine doses by autumn and 300 million by the end of 2020.
Alexander called it “an amazingly ambitious goal” and added: “I have no idea if we can reach that.”
No vaccine has been approved though a number are under development.
Neal Kashkari, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told ABC’s This Week he would welcome a robust economic recovery.
“But that would require a breakthrough in vaccines,” he said, “a breakthrough in widespread testing, a breakthrough in therapies, to give all of us confidence that it’s safe to go back. I don’t know when we’re going to have that confidence.”
White House advisers said they had begun informal talks with Congress about what to include in another round of coronavirus relief legislation. But they also predicted further jobs losses.
Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Larry Kudlow said they were holding discussions with lawmakers on issues including aid to states whose finances have been devastated by the pandemic. Another economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said legislation could include food aid and broadband access.
Since March, Congress has passed bills allocating $3tn to combat the pandemic, including taxpayer money for individuals and companies to blunt an economic impact that includes an unemployment rate of 14.7% in April, after job losses unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Democrats who control the House of Representatives are moving to unveil new relief legislation as early as this week. But the White House is in no hurry.
“Let’s take the next few weeks,” Mnuchin told Fox News Sunday.
“We just want to make sure that before we jump back in and spend another few trillion of taxpayers’ money that we do it carefully,” he said. “We’ve been very clear that we’re not going to do things just to bail out states that were poorly managed.”
Pressure may mount as the economic picture worsens. On CBS’s Face the Nation, Hassett said unemployment could rise “north of 20%” in May or June before what administration officials insist will be a robust recovery.
The April unemployment rate undercounts some out-of-work Americans, economists say. Asked if the country could be facing a “real” rate of close to 25%, Mnuchin said: “We could be.” Such a rate also includes people who have lost jobs and are not actively seeking employment and people considered underemployed.
Democrats are pushing for another massive bill that would include more money for state and local governments, coronavirus testing and the US Postal Service. Advisers say the White House will not consider new stimulus legislation in May.
“It’s not that we’re not talking. We are. It’s just informal at this stage,” Kudlow told ABC. “We’re collecting ideas for next steps, which will undoubtedly be data-driven.”
Kudlow said he took part in a Friday call with House lawmakers from both parties, and plans to do the same on Monday with members of the Senate, which is held by the Republicans.
“If we go to a phase-four deal, I think that President Trump has signaled that, while he doesn’t want to bail out the states, he’s willing to help cover some of the unexpected Covid expenses that might have come their way,” Hassett told CNN’s State of the Union.
The White House is “absolutely” pushing for a payroll tax cut, Mnuchin said. Trump has called for a cut to the tax, which is paid by employers and workers and funds Social Security and Medicare. The proposal has little congressional support.
Trump has also threatened to withhold funds from states that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, a stance critics say would exploit a public health crisis to advance political goals.
Source: theguardian.com
