Vice President Mike Pence said in an op-ed that panic over a second wave of COVID-19 infections was being overstated.
Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, provided an update on measures being taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal opinion piece and downplayed fears about a second wave of infections that is expected to come as states begin to reopen from their respective lockdowns.
“Such panic is overblown. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the courage and compassion of the American people, our public health system is far stronger than it was four months ago, and we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy,” Pence wrote.
In the article titled “There isn’t a coronavirus ‘second wave,’” Pence pointed out that the United States has increased testing throughout the pandemic.
“Every state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of three, have positive test rates under 10%. And in the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settings—prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilities—and contain them,” the vice president said.
“We’ve expanded testing across the board,” he continued. “At the end of February, between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labs and state public health facilities, the U.S. had performed only about 8,000 coronavirus tests. As of this week, we are performing roughly 500,000 tests a day, and more than 23 million tests have been performed in total.”
Pence suggested last week that there hadn’t been a noticeable uptick in cases related to the ongoing protests that began after the death of George Floyd.
“Our team has been following the potential health implications of these protests very closely,” Pence said last Wednesday on Fox Business Network. “And what I can tell you is that, at this point, we don’t see an increase in new cases now nearly two weeks on from when the first protests took effect.”
Despite the remarks, some states have seen cases surge in recent days. The governors of both Utah and Oregon paused their reopening plans because of recent spikes. Florida has also had record numbers of single-day infection increases, although Gov. Ron DeSantis has downplayed the increase as being a result of expanded testing.
