Trump administration has no regrets about reopening push, says Mnuchin

The US treasury secretary has said the Trump administration has no regrets about pushing states to reopen their economies, one day after the country reported more than 50,000 new coronavirus cases – the fourth record-breaking single-day toll in just over a week, according to Johns Hopkins figures.

Asked if he regretted that the White House pressured states to reopen as quickly as possible despite the repeated warnings of the country’s top public health experts, Steven Mnuchin told a press conference on Thursday: “No, absolutely not.”

Cases are rising significantly in more than 40 states, particularly across southern and western America, with California, Florida and Texas – the three most populous states in the country – seeing record increases. More than a dozen have been forced to pause reopening plans, while numbers of available hospital beds and testing capacity come under strain.

“The crisis is being handled,” Donald Trump insisted at the press conference to trumpet the latest jobs figures, which showed the unemployment rate drop to 11.1% in June from an initial estimate of 13.3% in May.

“It’s opening up far faster than anybody thought even possible, and more successfully,” said Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the rise in cases and now faces a steeper path to re-election in November.

“Today’s announcement proves that our economy is roaring back. It’s coming back extremely strong,” he added.

“I think we’ve had a very careful plan,” Mnuchin said of the push to reopen, while underlining that the strategy was still “primarily the states’ responsibility”.

Some Republican-led states that moved quickly to reopen this spring at Trump’s urging, such as Texas, have now pressed pause on that strategy. Others, such as Florida – which reported more than 10,000 new cases on Thursday, smashing its single-day case record – continue to refuse to change course.

Florida’s governor, Ron De Santis, insisted the state was “not going back” on reopening its economy, saying “people going to a business is not what’s driving” the increases. Instead, he said, younger people had not been adhering to social distancing measures.

Democratic-led California, which not long ago was celebrated for bringing case numbers under control, has now been forced to close bars, restaurants and other businesses again in 17 counties ahead of the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Ohio, Kansas and Louisiana, all of which appeared to have controlled the spread of the virus just a month ago, have reported some of their highest single-day totals in weeks. North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas set records for single-day cases on Wednesday.

The Covid Tracking Project said on Wednesday that the US’s seven-day average for new daily cases had doubled since 13 June, and that hospitalizations had jumped by the highest number since 21 April.

“We got hit very badly, worse than any country, with regard to the number of cases, and the number of deaths,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, told the BBC’s Today program on Thursday.

“The problem we’re facing now is that in an attempt to reopen or open and get it back to some form of normality, we’re seeing very disturbing spikes in different individual states in the United States … and that is not good news. We’ve got to get that under control, or we risk an even greater outbreak in the United States.”

But Trump and his team have repeatedly contradicted the country’s public health experts, telling the public it is safe to push ahead with reopening the economy while carefully adding the caveat that the ultimate responsibility for reopening lies with each state.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the US surgeon general, one of the the top healthcare officials in the federal government, reiterated calls for Americans to follow social distancing measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus ahead of the holiday weekend, including wearing face masks.

“There’s a reason we keep coming back to these same public health messages – they are tried and true,” the statement from the surgeon general, Jerome Adams, said. “We all have a role to play in beating this virus and getting back to school, work, worship, play and overall health.”

But the public messaging from the White House continues to contradict such advice. In an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, Trump was asked whether he really believes, as he has stated previously, that the virus would simply disappear.

“I do. I do,” he said. “Yeah, sure. At some point. And I think we’re going to have a vaccine very soon, too.”

Trump added: “We’re headed back in a very strong fashion … And I think we’re going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear. I hope.”

Trump has faced fierce criticism for downplaying the risks of the virus, and for his refusal to promote simple safety measures such as wearing a mask. Asked about this on Wednesday, he said he “thinks masks are good” but said he did not believe making masks mandatory across the country was necessary.

Responding to the jobs figures on Thursday, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said: “Today’s jobs report may just be a slight peak in a much larger valley, and unless President Trump demonstrates real leadership in fighting the health crisis … the pain America is experiencing will only worsen.”