President Trump praised West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice as his state remains the only one without a coronavirus case during the Tuesday press briefing on the outbreak.
The president made the remark in response to being asked about whether the federal government is considering building additional medical facilities to help the medical care system.
“We are looking at different sites and a few different locations,” Trump said. “We’re not going need them in West Virginia, where so far, I guess, they have none. Still none? Still none. Alright, West Virginia. Big Jim, the governor, he must be doing a good job.”
The governor acknowledged during a press conference last Friday that one of the reasons no one in the state has tested positive for the virus is because the state does not “have a lot of international travel,” according to the New York Times. “We know it’s here,” Justice said. “I mean, let’s be real. It has to be here. We just haven’t found it yet.”
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More recently, the governor encouraged his constituents to disregard the Centers for Disease Control and Trump’s guidelines to avoid restaurants and bars and interacting in big groups.
“Go to the grocery stores. For crying out loud, go to the grocery stores. If you want to go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans and eat,” he said Monday. “If we get to the point in time where we’ve got to close the grocery stores and drive a truck around and whatever and bring groceries to people and everything, we’ll do that.”
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, argued that the reason the state hasn’t seen a positive coronavirus case is related to testing availability. He has urged Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to increase testing, according to CNN.
As of Tuesday morning, there have been nearly 185,000 confirmed coronavirus cases globally, nearly 80,000 recoveries in totality, and more than 7,000 deaths, according to the latest reading by the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
