The United States confirmed over 4 million coronavirus cases Thursday, making up more than a quarter of global cases.
“The country is in very good shape, other than if you look south and west,” President Trump said during his Thursday press briefing. “Some problems, it’ll all work out.”
Test positivity rates in hot-spot states are high. In Arizona, the seven-day moving average of positive tests is 24.7%, Florida’s average is nearly 18.6%, the average in Texas is 15%, and the average in South Carolina is 15.4%, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The number of new deaths across the U.S. was 1,100 on Wednesday.
“Now I think it’s going come and go, it will, I mean you take a look at some of these locations were heavily infected,” Trump said. “You know when you look at what happened in New York and what happened in New Jersey and other places. It’s gone, I hope it stays gone, I think it will.”
Yet White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx privately told a group of state and local health officials Wednesday about a concerning rise in cases in about a dozen cities, according to audio obtained by journalism nonprofit group the Center for Public Integrity.
“I know it may look small, and you may say that only went from five to five and a half, and we’re going to wait and see what happens,” Birx said. “If you wait another three to four, even five, days, you’ll start to see a dramatic increase in cases. So finding and tracing those very early individuals is really critical.”
Birx added that the task force has “deep concerns about specific metros, of course in Florida, and spreading epidemic in California into the Central Valley.”
Trump announced Thursday that he has called off the Republican National Convention that was set to take place next month in Jacksonville, Florida.
“I looked at my team, and I said the timing for this event is not right, just not right with what’s happened recently, the flare-up in Florida, to have a big convention is not the right time,” Trump said at his Thursday press briefing.
Trump said delegates will still gather in North Carolina as planned and that his campaign will hold “telerallies.” Trump also plans to give a speech to be broadcast online.
“I have to protect the American people,” he said. “That’s what I’ve always done, that’s what I always will do, that’s what I’m about.”
California has now surpassed New York in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 421,857 cases. New York, with more than 413,000 known cases, had the most confirmed infections until Wednesday. New York is still the nation’s leader in the total number of deaths.
Senate Republicans rejected Trump’s push for a payroll tax cut to be included in the fourth coronavirus relief bill, a provision he has been pushing for weeks. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Thursday, “Not in this bill.” But it could be included in a fifth stimulus package.
Mnuchin said on CNBC that Trump is most interested in sending direct payments to people, similar to the direct payments made as part of the March CARES Act. When it comes to enhanced unemployment benefits, Mnuchin said, “We’re looking at something that looks like a 70% wage replacement.”
House and Senate Democrats rejected an opening offer from the GOP on the new coronavirus aid package, saying the Republican plan to reduce enhanced unemployment benefits is unacceptable. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that the overall $1 trillion price tag of the GOP proposal falls far short of what is needed to combat the virus and repair the extreme economic damage.
New jobless claims rose to 1.4 million last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, an increase from the prior week’s claims of 1.3 million. The uptick in jobless claims comes as some states have reversed reopening plans for their economies in response to surges in new coronavirus cases in over half of the country. Coronavirus hot spots had the highest number of claims. For the week ending July 11, claims were over 65,000 in Florida, more than 33,000 in Georgia, and roughly 20,000 in California.
Members of the Infectious Disease Society of America, a leading medical association representing infectious disease physicians and scientists, warned Thursday against reopening schools in states where coronavirus cases are surging, such as Florida and Texas. IDSA experts, as well as The School Superintendents Association, discussed the dangers of reopening schools without concrete safety plans in place, pointing out that older children are just as likely to spread COVID-19 as adults.
“When you have such surges of disease in the community, you’re basically asking for trouble if you open schools because you’re bringing in individuals from all across the community that potentially may be exposed to it,” Dr. Tina Tan, a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University, said in Thursday’s media briefing.
The school attended by Trump’s son, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in suburban Maryland, will not fully reopen in September out of concern about the coronavirus, despite Trump’s demand that all schools open for full-time, in-person instruction, the New York Times reported.
Robert Kosasky, the head of the school, wrote to parents that the school’s administration is still weighing whether to adopt a hybrid schedule in which students would come to classes some days each week and take classes virtually for the rest of the week or if all classes should be held online.
Trump pushed harder for full school reopenings during his Thursday press briefing, saying that this “is not about politics.”
“We believe many school districts can now reopen safely, provided they implement mitigation measures and health protocols to protect families, protect teachers, and to protect citizens,” he said.
