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Wednesday 8 July 2020 - 07:37

Trump Disagrees With Fauci on COVID-19 in the US

Story Code : 873198
Trump Disagrees With Fauci on COVID-19 in the US
His remarks on Tuesday came as the US, the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus, posted 60,209 new cases on the same day, a record for a 24-hour period, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.

The Baltimore-based university said in its latest data as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Wednesday) that 2,991,351 were affected and 131,362 died, including 1,114 additional deaths counted.

On Monday, Fauci, an immunologist, said, "The current state is really not good."

"We are still knee deep in the first wave" of COVID-19 infections, Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a Facebook and Twitter livestream.

Trump, however, said in a TV interview: “I disagree with him, I think we are in a good place."

"Dr. Fauci said don't wear masks, now he says wear them," Trump said on the "Full Court Press" news show.

Despite the spike in the cases, he said, "So we've done a good job. I think we are going to be in two, three, four weeks, by the time we next speak, I think we are going to be in very good shape."

Meanwhile, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Dr. Christopher Murray, said in a statement that “the US didn’t experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic.”

“This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections.”

There is an ongoing surge of infections in the south and the west after regional officials began to ease restrictions.

Texas and California, the two largest US states, saw the biggest jumps with over 10,000 each on Tuesday.

Other states including Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases.

Trump has been under harsh criticism over his administration’s handling of the pandemic

He downplayed the increasing number of daily cases, blaming them instead on increased testing.
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