Trump’s chief of staff: U.S. ‘not going to control’ pandemic

By Bailey Aldridge

The Raleigh News Observer

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said during an interview with CNN on Sunday that the United States is “not going to control the pandemic.”

When asked why by CNN’s Jake Tapper, Meadows responded: “Because it is a contagious virus.”

Meadows said the country is “making efforts to contain it.”

“What we need to do is make sure that we have the proper mitigation factors, whether it’s therapies or vaccines or treatments to make sure that people don’t die from this,” Meadows said, according to CNN.

President Donald Trump and his administration have been saying a coronavirus vaccine will be available soon. During Thursday’s presidential debate, Trump said the vaccine will be ready “within weeks,” but health experts say that’s unlikely, McClatchy News reports.

Trump has also touted therapeutics — such as regeneron and remdesivir — that doctors say he was given when he was hospitalized with the virus.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the antiviral drug remdesivir for the treatment of hospitalized coronavirus patients. It’s the first to receive such approval for COVID-19 treatment.

Regeneron has submitted an application with the FDA for an emergency use authorization, McClatchy reports.

Meadows’ comments come as the U.S. reported a record number of daily cases Friday.

The country recorded more than 83,000 new cases Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University — the most since the pandemic began in March.

More than 8.5 million in the U.S. have contracted the virus and more than 224,000 have died, Johns Hopkins data show.

Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that the U.S. is nearing the end of the pandemic — including during the debate when he said “we are rounding the turn.”

But health experts have said the change in seasons could worsen the situation.

“The winter is going to be long and hard,” Brooke Nichols, infectious-disease mathematical modeler at Boston University, told PolitiFact. “I do worry about the path of the current metrics.”

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