The White House is scheduled to hold a press conference at 1 p.m. ET in the press briefing room. The event will be live-streamed on the White House official website, as well as C-SPAN. Fox News has also been broadcasting these daily briefings in their entirety.
The United States currently has over 466,200 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 16,686 death, as well as 26,522 recoveries according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House response coordinator for the Coronavirus Task Force, said that the U.S. is testing from 118,000 to 120,000 people per day. There have been over two million tests conducted in the U.S, according to President Donald Trump.
Trump said during Thursday’s briefing that what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has done to alleviate hospital systems across the country is “incredible” as they are constructing “21 temporary hospitals and care facilities” that will add a total of 17,000 hospital beds.
“The American medical system continues to perform beyond our expectations, reminding us that the United States is blessed with the most advanced healthcare and the most skilled healthcare workers anywhere on the planet,” Trump said, adding “We want to thank all of the heroes on the frontlines as they fight to save American lives.”
The president also announced Thursday that 19 therapies and treatments are being tested and 26 more are in the active planning phase for clinical trials as part of the Food and Drug Administration’s coronavirus treatment acceleration program.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that as he cautioned the nation a week ago deaths would be spiking this week, a reason why “there seems to be a record of number of deaths compared to the day before.” There were 1900 new deaths reported in the U.S. on Thursday, according to the Worldometer coronavirus tracking website. Fauci said the increase in deaths were predicted, even though social distancing guidelines are being followed.
“At the same time as we’re seeing the increase in deaths, we’re seeing a rather dramatic decrease in the need for hospitalizations. I think yesterday was something like 200 new hospitalizations when it’s been as high as 1,400 at any given time, so that is going in the right direction…That means that what we are doing is working and therefore we need to continue to do it,” Fauci said.
“I know I sound like a broken record. That’s good, I want to sound like a broken record. Let’s just keep doing it,” he added.
