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 The virus has claimed over 140,000 U.S. lives since the pandemic
started, and Florida, California, and other Southern and Western
states shatter records every day.
Texas reported 7,300 new cases on Sunday after five straight days of
new infections exceeding 10,000.
Despite record levels of new cases nationwide, the Trump
administration is pushing for schools to reopen in a few weeks and
resisting a federal mandate to wear masks in public.
Trump, who faces a tough battle for re-election in November,
defended his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in an interview
broadcast on Sunday. The United States, with 3.7 million total
cases, has almost as many infections as the next three hardest-hit
countries combined - Brazil, India and Russia.
"We have embers and we do have flames. Florida became more
flame-like, but it's - it's going to be under control."
Trump on "Fox News Sunday" repeated his assertion that the virus
would eventually disappear.
"I'll be right eventually," he said. "It's going to disappear and
I'll be right."
Experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have
warned that cases and deaths could rise this autumn and winter.
Nearly all 20 forecasting models used by the CDC project rising
deaths in the coming weeks.
Throughout the United States, every metric to measure the outbreak
is going in the wrong direction - rising cases, deaths,
hospitalizations and positivity rates of test results.
At least 14 states have reported record coronavirus hospitalizations
so far in July, including Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, North
Carolina, Nevada and Texas.
Trump said he did not agree with CDC Director Robert Redfield that
this fall and winter would be one of the most difficult times in
American public health, as hospitals deal with the seasonal flu on
top of COVID cases. "I don't know and I don't think he knows," Trump
said.
Trump also called Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious
diseases expert, "a little bit of an alarmist."
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TESTING SHORTAGES, DELAYS
Fauci has warned that cases could soon top 100,000 a day if Americans do not
come together to take steps necessary to halt the spread of the virus. The
country is averaging 60,000 new cases a day and reported a record one-day
increase of 77,299 on Thursday.
Testing shortages and delayed results in some states are hampering efforts to
curb the outbreak, similar to situations that frustrated state officials and
health experts at the start of the pandemic in March and April.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said on
NBC’s "Meet the Press" on Sunday that people were waiting up to a week to learn
if they tested positive.
"That really undercuts the value of the testing," Collins said.
Suburban Philadelphia resident Tamara Hala, 35, said she decided to get tested
after attending a gathering where someone outside her group said COVID-19 was a
"hoax." But she has not yet received results from the July 8 test at a CVS
store.
"I just can't stop thinking about how many people potentially have it and don't
know," she said.
Instead of expanding testing, the Trump administration wants to block $25
billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing, according to reports
in the Washington Post and New York Times.
The White House declined on Sunday to comment to Reuters on those reports.
The number of COVID tests performed each day has doubled since late May but
remains lower than recommended by some health experts. The United States set a
record on Friday with over 850,000 tests performed, according to data from the
COVID-Tracking Project
https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-tests.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne
in Wilton, Connecticut and Nandita Bose and Heather Timmons in Washington;
Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Peter Cooney)
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