U.S. Officials Offer Hopeful Tone on Covid as Winter Nears
U.S. Officials Offer Hopeful Tone on Covid as Winter Nears
By
Sally Roessel
Dec. 12, 2019 / 6:33 p.m. GMT
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump promised a new look at COVID-19 on Tuesday and offered to release details of his own research into the virus on Wednesday.
A day before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s first daily update of the pandemic, the White House said Trump was willing to share the details of his own research. The White House said he was “open to a wide range of ideas and suggestions,” and was willing to speak with anyone who wanted to hear what “the data show is happening right now.”
The federal government has begun releasing its daily coronavirus data in the hope it will help scientists decide where to spend the $2 trillion needed to combat the pandemic.
The White House also said Trump would order an unprecedented number of ventilators and medical supplies needed to help health care workers treat patients with severe cases of COVID-19.
A White House official said Trump would order 2,000 ventilators from medical supply companies like Medtronic, 3,000 from the U.S. Army, 200 from Northrop Grumman, 4,000 from 3M, and 1,000 from Allergan and 3,000 from Johnson & Johnson. The order would include ventilators that the military is selling to the public, not the ones the government needs as part of a public health emergency.
“I think that we will get some good decisions here, and I think we could be very pleased by the decisions that the president makes,” said Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Other new orders released Tuesday included:
$6.3 billion for the Defense Department to buy and deploy ventilators and other devices needed to help hospital staff and patients with COVID-19.