Several U. S. states reported new record-breaking coronavirus case counts over the weekend, as nationwide the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 140,000…
Several U. S. states reported new record-breaking coronavirus case counts over the weekend, as nationwide the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 140,000 and President Trump insisted again that the virus would “disappear.”
States such as Florida, California and Kentucky were reporting record, or near-record numbers of new cases and in Texas, a hospital official told NPR that funeral homes and morgues were overflowing from the bodies of COVID-19 victims.
Meanwhile, in a Fox News interview aired on Sunday, the president repeated an assertion he first made in late February that COVID-19 would “disappear” on its own, saying that his initial prediction would be proven correct.
“I’ll be right eventually,” the president said in the interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace.
“I said it’s going to disappear. I’ll say it again: It’s going to disappear — and I’ll be right,” he said.
Asked by Wallace if such statements “discredit” him, Trump replied: “You know why it doesn’t discredit? Because I’ve probably been right more than anybody else.”
However there was no indication that the disease would disappear anytime soon based on a snapshot of some of the nation’s hot spots. Here’s a look at a few of them:
Florida
On Sunday, Florida reported 12,478 new cases, its fifth consecutive day with more than 10,000 cases. Although that is off the peak of 15,300 new infections reported less than a week ago, on July 12, which marked not only a record for Florida, but broke the national case-count record set by New York in early April.
The number of COVID-19 deaths in the state since the start of the pandemic surpassed 5,000 on Saturday.
Speaking at a news conference in St. Augustine on Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis complained that headlines about the record number of cases were unduly worrying Floridians.
