Donald Trump sparked outrage on Wednesday for repeating his claim that the coronavirus will “just disappear,” even as new Covid-19 cases in the US continued to surge to record daily highs and health experts issued dire warnings about the alarming new figures.
As a number of states reversed course on their reopening plans amid spiking case counts, Trump told Fox Business in an interview that he still believed the virus would simply go away on its own.
“I think we’re gonna be very good with the coronavirus,” he said. “I think that at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.”
According to the Covid Tracking Project, the US broke a new record on Wednesday with more than 50,000 new cases reported. A day earlier, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, warned that the US could see as many as 100,000 daily infections if states where cases are soaring don’t act more aggressively to mitigate the spread.
Eight states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas — announced single-day highs on Tuesday.
Trump, who has been claiming since February that the virus will miraculously disappear, has faced intense criticism and plummeting approval ratings over his downplaying of the virus that has now killed more than 128,000 people in the US.
Critics were appalled when he repeated the claim Wednesday.