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Covid-19 cases soar in Florida, NYC marks zero deaths, Trump targets own heath officials

Hindustan Times, Washington | ByYashwant Raj
Jul 13, 2020 09:02 PM IST

New York city reported zero deaths zero Covid-19 deaths Sunday for the first time since the start of the epidemic in April and Florida state reinforced its grim status as the new epicenter of the American outbreak with more than 15,000 new infections, the same day, a single-day record for any US state.

New York city reported zero deaths zero Covid-19 deaths Sunday for the first time since the start of the epidemic in April and Florida state reinforced its grim status as the new epicenter of the American outbreak with more than 15,000 new infections, the same day, a single-day record for any US state.

And President Donald Trump retweeted Monday a post accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is spearheading his administration’s fightback against the virus, of “lying”. On Sunday, the White House sought to discredit Anthony Fauci, the top epidemiologist, whose gloomy outlook on the epidemic ran counter to the administration’s.

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Trump has been in a hurry to get past the epidemic in a bid to minimize its impact on his re-election chances. He has pushed for the economy to reopen, pressured schools and colleges to resume in-person teaching and tried, with little success, to get back on the campaign trail.

Infections have been soaring, at the rate almost of 60,000 a day. On Monday, the cumulative confirmed cases had climbed to . 3.03 million with more than 59,000 new infections, and fatalities, which have been declining, went up to 135,205 with 428 more in the last 24 hours.

Florida, a Republican-ruled state that struck a defiant note early on as New York and other states had been crushed by spiraling cases and deaths, is the new epicenter of the surge. It recorded more than 15,000 new cases on Sunday, a one-day record for itself and the country.

The Florida state health department reported 15,299 of the 135,992 samples it tested Sunday were positive. The positivity rate of new infections was 11.25%, a two-week low but still over the 10%-mark. And fatalities went up to 4,232 with 45 more in the last 24 hours.

New York city, which had become the epicenter of the global epidemic, reported zero Covid-19 deaths on Sunday, marking a major milestone in its recovery. The city has had 215,924 cases and 18,670 deaths. At its worst, there had been harrowing accounts of overwhelmed hospitals, mass burials and refrigerated trucks being used to hold bodies and.

The city, as well as the state, went under a strict lockdown. Flattened the curve and beat it down. Officials are now worried of travelers bringing back the epidemic from Florida, Texas and other other southern and western states hit by the new surge, and has announced travel restrictions.

Fauci has warned it will get worse and the number of daily cases could touch 100,000. His bleak and blunt assessment of the situation has been at odds with the administration’s. “As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not,” he told FiveThirtyEight website last week.

The Trump administration has sidelined him and on Sunday aides passed on to some mediate outlets, as the New York Times reported, a “lengthy list” of his remarks from the early days of the epidemic, when he had indeed been wrong in some of his assessments.

The attempt is to further discredit him and his prognosis.

The president went after his own CDC, whose head was appointed by him, retweeting post that accuses it and others of “lying”, for their dire warnings about reopening schools. The president had earlier criticized the agency’s school reopening guidelines and called for its revision.

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