Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn declined to defend a claim from President Trump that most cases of the coronavirus are “harmless.”
“I’m not going to get into who is right and who is wrong,” Hahn told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday when pressed on the matter.
During his remarks at the White House on Independence Day, the president said that “99% of which [cases] are totally harmless” without presenting any evidence to support the claim.
“So you won’t say whether 99% of coronavirus cases are ‘completely harmless’ is true or false, what the president said at the White House last night?” Dana Bash, who was filling in for regular host Jake Tapper, asked Hahn.
“Dana, what I’ll say is that we have data in the White House task force,” Hahn responded. “Those data show us this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously.”
“I’m not going to get into who’s right and who is wrong,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn says when pressed about the misleading claim President Trump made — that 99% of coronavirus cases in America are “totally harmless.” https://t.co/W6TLmb2Uvs #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/WpJmQRdGVQ
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) July 5, 2020
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb was also asked about Trump’s claim on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“I’m not really sure what he was referring to,” Gottlieb said. “He might be referring to the number of people who get hospitalized based on a number of people who get infected, which is probably less than 5% when you count all the asymptomatic infection and infection in young people that might not be getting diagnosed.”
“But certainly more than 1% of people get serious illness from this,” he said, adding, “So this is still a pretty bad virus.”
“I’m not really sure what he was referring to,” @ScottGottliebMD says of @realDonaldTrump’s claim that 99% of #Covid19 cases are “harmless”
WATCH –> pic.twitter.com/WxpX4BdGtp
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) July 5, 2020
Coronavirus cases have been spiking in recent weeks in states across the south, such as Texas, Florida, and Arizona. As of Sunday, the United States had recorded more than 2.8 COVID-19 cases and over 129,000 related deaths.
