US health secretary: No spike in virus cases in areas reopening

There has so far not been a surge in coronavirus cases in areas of the United States that are reopening, US Health Secretary Alex Azar said on Sunday.

“We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases,” Azar told broadcaster CNN. “We still see spikes in some areas that are in fact close to very localized situations.”

Many states across the nation, which has seen more than 88,000 virus-related deaths – by far the most in the world – are starting to ease restrictions to varying degrees.

US President Donald Trump is pushing for a swift reopening of the economy, amid warnings by health officials about a resurgence of the virus if states move too quickly.

Azar said local leaders must judge “whether a bar being open, a restaurant, a school is the right thing.”

“These are very localized determinations; there should not be a one size fits all to reopening,” he said.

“But reopen we must because it’s not health versus the economy. It’s actually health versus health,” he said, pointing to possible health consequences of maintaining shutdowns, such as suicides and a lack of cardiac procedures and other vaccinations.

Asked about images of crowded bars in some parts of the country, the health and human services secretary said that was the cost of freedom.

“I think in any individual instance you’re going to see people doing things that are irresponsible, that’s part of the freedom that we have here in America,” Azar said.

Peter Navarro, a top economic advisor to Trump, slammed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for its response to the virus outbreak, saying the agency “really let the country down” on testing.

“Not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test, and that did set us back,” Navarro told NBC, referring to delays in diagnoses due to faulty test kits developed by the CDC in February that took several weeks to fix.

Trump has come under fire for his handling of the pandemic, including for a lack of testing capability.

The president’s son, Eric Trump, on Saturday accused the Democrats of “milking” coronavirus lockdowns in order to “deprive” his father of campaign rallies and hurt him in November’s election, including through tactics such as mail-in ballots in pandemic relief legislation.

“You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3. And guess what, after November 3 coronavirus will magically all of a sudden go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen,” the younger Trump told broadcaster Fox News.

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He claimed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, was happy that the Republican president was not able to “draw massive crowds.”

“Biden loves this. Biden can’t go on stage without making some horrible blunder … So his campaign is thrilled that he’s not going out there,” he said. “And they think they’re taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which is being able to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000 people every single time.” (dpa)