President at odds with advisers as global death toll nears 100,000
America’s top infectious disease expert has cautioned against any move to relax restrictions on peoples’ movements, echoing calls from other global public health officials but putting him at odds with Donald Trump, who is agitating for a reopening of the coronavirus-battered US economy.
As confirmed global deaths from Covid-19 approached 100,000, Anthony Fauci said “now is not the time to back off” on restrictions, despite what he described as “favourable signs” in America’s early hotspots.
“We would want to see a clear indication that you were very, very clearly and strongly going in the right direction, because the one thing you don’t want to do is you don’t want to get out there prematurely and then wind up back in the same situation,” the senior advisor to the White House told CNN.
Trump, seemingly concerned by deflating approval ratings and exploding unemployment figures, had told reporters that the US was at the “top of the hill” and that he hoped to open up the economy “very, very, very, very soon”.
According to a report in the Washington Post, the US president wants to reopen the country next month despite concerns from both economists and health experts that America’s coronavirus pandemic is nowhere near over.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, also warned Trump against trying to get back to normal prematurely. “I would hope that the scientific community would weigh in and say, ‘You can’t do this, it is only going to make matters worse if you go out too soon,’” Pelosi said in an interview with Politico.
US deaths due to the coronavirus topped 17,000 on Friday, although there were signs that Americans staying home was curbing new infections. More than 7,000 people have died in New York State alone, but its governor Andrew Cuomo expressed cautious optimism on Friday that the state’s infection rate was slowing.
In the latest sign of tensions with the US, Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas criticised the Trump administration’s handling of the outbreak as too slow.
In a preview of an interview for Der Spiegel, Maas took aim at the two extremes of national coronavirus responses, contrasting China’s “very authoritarian measures” with America’s decision to play down the threat “for a very long time”.
“These are two extremes, neither of which can be a model for Europe,” Maas said.
A German official last week accused the US of “wild west” tactics in outbidding for or blocking shipments of vital medical supplies, and Maas said he hoped the US would rethink its international relationships in light of the crisis.
“Let’s see to what extent the actions of the American government will lead to discussions in the US about whether the ‘America first’ model really works,” he said, adding that aggressive trade policies may have hurt the country’s ability to procure protective equipment.
Although Trump enjoyed a small bump in support at the beginning of America’s outbreak, it fell far short of the increase enjoyed by George W Bush after 9/11, and recent polls have seen his ratings fall back to pre-coronavirus levels.
In Asia, China weighed in on a growing row between the World Health Organization and Taiwan, accusing Taiwan’s government of “unscrupulously using the virus to seek independence”.
The WHO has been accused of being too deferential to China and praising its virus response despite the government initially suppressing information about the outbreak. It denies the charge and earlier this week its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he had been subjected to months of racist attacks which he said were condoned by Taiwan. Taiwan says the accusations are groundless and has demanded an apology.
In Europe, Italian newspapers reported that the government was poised to extend confinement measures due to expire on 13 April to 3 May. Officials used helicopters, drones and stepped-up police checks to make sure people don’t slip out of their homes over the Easter holiday. On Thursday alone, police stopped 300,000 people to ensure they had permission to travel.
Spain’s lockdown, which came into force on 14 March, will also remain in place, its health minister said on Friday. But some non-essential workers will begin returning to their jobs on Monday at the end of a two-week freeze on all non-vital economic activity, despite warnings that the relaxation of the strict confinement policy could drive a rise in contagion.
Lebanese Ministry of Information
