US President Donald Trump has said while the United States is the leading nation in the world with most coronavirus tests, India is in the second position.
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| Donald Trump and Narendra Modi. (Photo credit: PTI) |
S President Donald Trump has said while the United States is the leading nation in the world with most coronavirus tests, India is in the second position. Trump said that the US has done over 50 million coronavirus tests, much more than any other country in the world. This is followed by India, which has done over 12 million tests so far.
So far more than 140,000 Americans have died due to coronavirus and 3.8 million have tested positive. While the US economy is slowly coming back to normal, the pandemic is now spreading in the Sun Belt of the country.
“As one family, we mourn every precious life that's been lost. I pledge in their honor that we will develop a vaccine and we will defeat the virus. We're doing very well with vaccine development and therapeutic development,” Trump said at a White House news conference on Tuesday, his first on coronavirus after several weeks.
Trump also assured that coronavirus vaccines will be coming a lot sooner than expected. Replying to a question, Trump said the US is “leading the world" in terms of COVID-19 testing. "We're going to be over 50 million tests," he said, adding that "the second country is India with 12 million (tests). Then you have seven million, six million, and four million. I think that we are doing a tremendous amount of testing.”
The "China virus", Trump said, is a vicious and dangerous illness. “It's a nasty, horrible disease that should've never been allowed to escape China, but it did. 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,” the US president said. On tackling the virus, Trump said his administration is developing a powerful strategy.
"We've learned a great deal about it (COVID-19) and who it targets. We are in the process of developing a strategy that's going to be very, very powerful," he said. “Some areas of our country are doing very well; others are doing less well. It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” Trump said.
He said the median age of those who succumb to COVID-19 infection is 78 years, adding that roughly half of all deaths have been individuals in nursing homes or in long-term care. “Young adults may often have mild or even no symptoms. They won't even know they're sick. They won't have any idea that they have a virus. They won't have any idea at all,” he said, adding that youth will act responsibly.
Trump said the data shows children have the lowest fatality risk as 99.96 percent of all virus fatalities are adults. “By understanding these risk profiles and learning how to treat the disease, we've been able to greatly reduce mortality in the United States,” Trump said. Several treatments are already available in the US that can significantly reduce the severity and duration of the disease, including remdesivir, he said.
“We've learned best practices for treatment of the virus at every stage and have shared these findings with medical providers, and we've shared them all over the world. The relationship with other countries has been very strong. We're all working together," Trump said.