United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday cautioned that the coronavirus situation in the country is expected to “get worse before it gets better”, reported AFP.
The Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 tracker places US on the top of the list of the countries that are affected due to the pandemic. The country has a total of 38,99,211 cases, including 1,41,995 deaths and 11,82,018 recoveries.
“Some areas of our country are doing very well,” Trump said during the media briefing at the White House virus. “Others are doing less well. It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better.”
The American president said the aim of his administration is not just to manage the pandemic but to end it, adding that the vaccines are coming sooner than expected.
Trump said there has been a “concerning rise” in infections in the southern parts of the country. He urged people to wear face masks to contain the spreading coronavirus.
“We are asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask. Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. They will have an effect and we need everything we can get.”
Trump had for months refused to wear a mask in public, even as health experts in his administration said wearing one would slow the spread of the virus. He also ridiculed those who wore a mask, like Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The president was seen wearing a mask in public for the first time only on June 11.
Last week, Trump vowed to not order Americans to wear masks to contain the spread of the coronavirus. “I do not believe in the statement that if everyone wore a mask, everything disappears,” he had said in an interview .
On Tuesday, Trump asserted that the US is leading in the world when it comes to testing for Covid-19 and said India was in second place. “We’re going to be over 50 million tests...second country is India with 12 million [tests],” he said, according to PTI. “Then you have seven million, six million, and four million. I think that we are doing a tremendous amount of testing.”
He reiterated his allegations against China and said the disease should have never “been allowed to escape” the country. “It’s a nasty, horrible disease that should’ve never been allowed to escape China, but it did,” he said. “It infected the world, and the world is suffering. But we’re going to get it taken care of, and we’re helping lots of other countries.”
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