President Trump said Saturday that the U.S. is heading into what could be its “toughest” weeks as coronavirus spikes across the country, warning that things will get worse before they get better.
“There will be a lot of death, unfortunately. There will be death,” Trump said to open his daily briefing on the pandemic.
“This will be probably the toughest week, between this week and next week, and there will be a lot of death, unfortunately,” the president said. “But a lot less death than if this wasn’t done, but there will be death. We’re looking for an obvious focus and the hardest-hit regions. Some of them are obvious and some are not so obvious. They spring up, they hit you like you got hit by a club.”
“Every decision we’re making is made to save lives. It’s really our sole consideration. We want to save lives. We want as few lives lost as possible,” Trump continued.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said the counties in and around New York, Detroit, and New Orleans are still on the rising part of the curve, and their peaks will all hit in the next seven days.
“They’re all on the upside of their curve of mortality, so you know when you get to the peak, you come down the other side,” Birx said. “By the predictions that are in that healthdata.org, they’re predicting those three hotspots, all of them hitting together in the next six to seven days.”
Trump, who said he has twice tested negative for COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, told reporters gathered in the White House briefing room that he may himself take hydroxychloroquine, which he has called a “game changer” for treating the virus.
“If it were me, in fact, I might do it anyway,” Trump said about the drug, normally used to treat malaria and lupus. “I may take it. Okay? I may take it. And I’ll have to ask my doctors about that, but I may take it.”
“I just hope that hydroxychloroquine wins,” he said. “Is there a possibility? What do you have to lose?”
On Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave chloroquine and its derivative, hydroxychloroquine, emergency-use authorization, although many physicians were already using the drug.
The antimalarial drug has been deemed the most highly rated treatment for the novel coronavirus in an international poll of more than 6,000 doctors.
The survey, conducted by Sermo, a global health care polling company, asked 6,227 physicians in 30 countries to find out what works against SARS-CoV-2. The poll found that 37% of those treating patients suffering frm the coronavirusa that causes COVID-19 rated hydroxychloroquine as the “most effective therapy,” choosing the drug from a list of 15 choices.
Trump said in the briefing that he called the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, on Saturday. “I said I’d appreciate if they would release the amounts that we ordered” of hydroxychloroquine.
FDA commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn followed Trump’s opening remarks, saying, “We are prioritizing this drug to come in for clinical trials and use if doctors think it’s appropriate.”
