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Post by Admin on Apr 1, 2020 18:05:13 GMT
The Chinese government has deliberately underreported the total number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the country, the U.S. intelligence community told the White House, a new report says.
Bloomberg, citing three U.S. officials, reported Wednesday that the intelligence community said in a classified report that China’s public tally of COVID-19 infections and deaths is purposefully incomplete.
The secret report concludes that China’s numbers are fake, two of the officials told Bloomberg. The White House received the report last week, according to the news outlet.
China has reported 82,361 coronavirus cases, data from Johns Hopkins University shows. That number is about half of the total cases confirmed in the U.S., which has become the country with the highest number of reported infections in the world.
Axios’ Jonathan Swan on his conversation with the Chinese ambassador to the US Neither the White House nor the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., immediately responded to CNBC’s requests for comments on Bloomberg’s report.
“You don’t know what the numbers are in China,” President Donald Trump said at a White House press briefing last week.
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Post by Admin on Apr 3, 2020 2:28:09 GMT
When the coronavirus outbreak first hit in the U.S., public health officials urged most people to forego wearing a face mask. Not anymore: Experts are calling for masks or other facial covering in public as confirmed cases in the U.S. increase. “I do think we need to have facial coverings for folks, so everyone has to wear one and we are protecting others from us,” Dr. Dena Grayson, an infectious disease specialist, told Yahoo Finance (video above). Grayson stressed that normal people don’t need to wear N95 masks, the special respirator masks that “are really recommended for health care workers and first responders who are in close contact repeatedly with people who are COVID-19, the illness caused by this coronavirus.” Jospeh Allen, the director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote a Washington Post op-ed arguing for Americans to wear masks. “The debate is over,” Allen wrote. “You should be wearing a mask when you go out.” He added that doing so would “prevent the user from infecting others by acting as a physical barrier that will block large droplets from coughs and sneezes... protect you from others around you who might be sick... serve as a reminder not to touch your face... [and serve] as a vital social cue. You are sending a signal to others that there is a real threat out there.” Asked about recommendations for Americans to wear masks in public on Thursday evening, President Trump stated: “I think [health officials] are going to be coming out with regulations on that, and... I don’t think they’ll be mandatory because I don’t think people want to do that. ... In many cases, the scarf is better. It’s thicker.” The U.S. is currently experiencing a shortage of ventilators, testing kits, and proper face masks for health care workers. The mask shortage is tied to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, which depleted the federal stockpile. Health Secretary Alex Azar has said that the U.S. needs at least 300 million masks for the current pandemic. Dr. Rishi Desai, a former official for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), told Yahoo Finance that N95 masks “are really the ones that help protect against small particles from getting into your airways, those are in short supply in hospital. And if you have one, that would be ideal to get over to a health care worker. Those are the folks who need it.”
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Post by Admin on Apr 5, 2020 19:54:12 GMT
Donald Trump said at a press conference Saturday evening that his administration's use of the Defense Production Act to compel production of personal protective equipment could be considered a "retaliation." The statement comes amid an ongoing dispute with the manufacturing company 3M, which has traded rebuttals with the White House over apparent restrictions on mask exports.
"That's what it is, it's a retaliation," Trump said of using the law's authorities, as he is working with 3M to help fulfill his order for 180 million N-95 respirator masks. "If people don't give us what we need for our people, we're going to be very tough."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a press conference earlier on Saturday that his country will not punish the United States after Trump had previously announced that exports of N-95 respirators may be restricted.
"We recognize that our countries are deeply interlinked in sometimes very complex ways," Trudeau said at a COVID-19 briefing outside Rideau Cottage, the prime minister's official residence, in Ottawa. "The necessary goods and services that flow back and forth across our border keep us both safe and help us on both sides of the border."
A senior Trump administration official further complicated the stand-off on Saturday, telling Newsweek that widespread reports of mask embargoes were not accurate.
"The U.S. has certainly not cut off N-95 exports to Canada or Mexico," the official said. "That is simply fake news propagated by malicious provocateurs."
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Post by Admin on Apr 6, 2020 23:20:42 GMT
Live: Trump and coronavirus task force hold briefing at White House
Members of the Coronavirus Task Force hold a press briefing at the start of what President Trump described April 6 as the “toughest week” of the pandemic.
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Post by Admin on Apr 7, 2020 21:56:56 GMT
President Trump and the coronavirus task force give an update on the response effort from the White House.
Republicans raised alarms after a reporter with links to the Chinese propaganda apparatus appeared at a White House briefing and questioned President Trump over Beijing’s efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report.
Several lawmakers feared the reporter from Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV was spreading propaganda in the White House and called for a response, Fox News reported Tuesday.
“Only last week, there were multiple flights coming from China full of medical supplies,” the reporter asked the president at Monday’s briefing. “Companies like Huawei and Alibaba have been donating to the United States, like 1.5 million N95 masks and also a lot of medical gloves, and much more medical supplies.”
“Sounds like a statement more than a question,” Trump responded.
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