Final week of campaigning kicks off in US as virus cases break records
The final full week of campaigning before the Nov. 3 presidential election has kicked off in the United States as surging coronavirus death toll and new virus outbreak in the White House raise new questions about President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 response.
Trump has once against claimed that the US is “rounding the turn” on coronavirus as the country set records in recent days for daily infections.
“There’s no nation in the world that’s recovered like we’ve recovered,” Trump told cheering supporters in New Hampshire on Sunday.
However, Democratic challenger Joe Biden accused Trump of surrendering to the pandemic that has killed about 225,000 people in the United States.
The White House made its own COVID headlines on Sunday when officials acknowledged that another coronavirus outbreak had struck the White House, infecting Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and four other top aides.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Sunday that the administration was “not going to control the pandemic.”
“We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations, because it is a contagious virus — just like the flu,” Meadows noted.
Biden called Meadows’ remarks an admission that “they’ve given up on their basic duty to protect the American people.”
Trump made no reference to the new cases during campaign rallies in New Hampshire and Maine on Sunday as the virus continued to rage unchecked across the country and in the White House.
The US president had downplayed the threat and severity of the coronavirus pandemic since day one, saying that “the virus would simply go away.”
On Monday, Trump will head to Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, and speak at rallies in Allentown, Lititz and Martinsburg. Pennsylvania has been heavily courted with frequent visits by both candidates.
The US president is set for multiple trips to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week, as well as visits to Nebraska, Arizona and Nevada to woo early voters.
Biden was expected to remain in his home state of Delaware on Monday. He is scheduled to travel to Georgia on Tuesday, with stops in Atlanta.
The former vice president will be aided with an appearance in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday by former President Barack Obama.
The United States has seen its highest number of new COVID-19 cases on Friday and Saturday, offering stark of the Trump’s dismissive and erratic handling of the virus.
Surging numbers in the US -- where there have been a total of more than 8.6 million infections and 225,230 people have died -- show the nation is at a "dangerous tipping point," former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday.
Source: Press TV
