Trump angry over market decline as coronavirus response criticized

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at the media for making the new coronavirus “look as bad as possible,” as his administration drew ire over response plans to an outbreak in the United States that health officials say is inevitable.

Critical cable news channels like CNN “are doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets, if possible,” Trump said on Twitter, misspelling coronavirus.

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Trump announced the appointment of his vice president, Mike Pence, to head the US response to the rapidly spreading virus, while contending that the virus spread in the US is not inevitable, during a press conference on Friday.

“It may get bigger, it may get a little bigger, it may not get bigger at all,” he said.

He also said that the US may restrict travel to and from Italy and South Korea – two countries severely impacted by the coronavirus – at the “right time.”

Trump’s press conference came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that a US citizen in California is infected with the virus from an unknown source.

The person appears to not have any relevant travel history or exposure to another infected person, which would make the patient the first case of “community spread,” meaning the source of the infection is unknown, the CDC said.

There are 15 people infected with the virus in the US, with most of those people recovering or fully recovered, health authorities said Wednesday.

Markets have also been declining in Europe and Asia, as investors fear slowdowns in production and consumer spending. Larry Kudlow, a key White House aide, went on television on Tuesday in a bid to calm markets, but failed to have an impact.

US markets have erased their gains for the year-to-date. Trump often touts stock market figures as part of his pitch for re-election later this year. Polls show popular opinion on his economic performance far exceeds his overall support levels.

More than 50 cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported in the US, including those passengers who were evacuated from a quarantined cruise ship off Japan.

CDC officials warned on Tuesday that it was not a question of if but when the new coronavirus would spread in communities in the US, and urged the public to prepare “for the expectation that this might be bad.”

There has been growing concern that the response to the virus that started in China will become politicized.

Politicians from the rival Democratic Party have said the White House had failed to appoint a point person to handle the response, while noting Trump has been trying to cut public health budgets.

Before appointing Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was leading the administration’s coronavirus efforts.

“The American people need to take a breath here,” Azar said during congressional testimony on Wednesday.

The federal government’s budget request of 2.5 billion dollars for the response to the new coronavirus has drawn criticism in the Senate for being too low.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, was sharply critical of the Trump administration, saying the response from the White House so far has been “too little and too late” and lacks a clear plan for dealing with the spread of the virus.

Schumer is proposing an 8.5-billion-dollar budget allocation for the government’s response to the spread of the new coronavirus, including 1 billion dollars for US overseas aid.

Trump on Wednesday attacked Schumer saying he was trying to score political points, but said he would accept whatever funding figure Congress approves.

Anthony Fauci, from the National Institutes of Health, said that a vaccine that can be fully deployed but will take a year to a year-and-a-half. (dpa)