COVID-19 is tough and smart, but we are tougher and smarter: Trump

Washington: US President Donald Trump has said that the country is dealing with an invisible enemy, but is tougher and smarter.

“We are learning much about the Invisible Enemy. It is tough and smart, but we are tougher and smarter,” Trump tweeted ahead of a White House briefing on tackling the coronavirus pandemic. 

The United States has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, with thousands dying of the Covid-19 disease across the country. Senior official on Sunday warned of the “hardest” week ahead, but some saw glimmers of hope from a slight slowing of fatalities.

New York, the hardest-hit state, reported on Sunday that for the first time in a week, deaths had fallen slightly from the day before, but there were still nearly 600 new fatalities and more than 7,300 new cases.

“Maybe that’s a good sign,” Trump later told reporters at a White House briefing, referring to the drop in fatalities in New York.

Trump also said the United States was “very far down the line” on developing vaccines for the coronavirus. “We’ll see what happens,” he said. But he offered no specifics.

Louisiana has become a hot spot for the virus, reporting a jump in deaths to nearly 500 and more than 13,000 cases. The governor predicted the state would run out of ventilators by Thursday.

Places such as Pennsylvania, Colorado and Washington, DC, are also starting to see rising deaths.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday that new hospitalisations had fallen by 50 per cent over the previous 24 hours. He cautioned that it was not yet clear whether the crisis was reaching a plateau in the state, which has a total of 4,159 deaths and more than 122,000 cases, by far the most of any US state.

Nationally, cases the respiratory disease topped 336,000, while the death toll stood at 9,573.