Kayleigh McEnany claims US is the ‘leader’ in COVID-19 response

Cases might be inching toward three million, but the White House press secretary says the US is leading the world in its COVID-19 response.

Natalie Brown

@natalieisbrown

2 min read

July 7, 2020 - 10:14AM

Coronavirus cases in the United States might be approaching three million – and more than 130,200 Americans might have died – but in the eyes of the White House, the world is looking at the US as “a leader in COVID-19”.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made the bold claim at a media briefing on Monday afternoon, while defending President Donald Trump’s comments over the weekend that “99 per cent” of coronavirus cases are “totally harmless”.

“Now we have tested almost 40 million people,” he said in a message to the nation, in celebration of Independence Day.

“By doing so, we show cases, 99 per cent of which are totally harmless. Results that no other country can show because no other country has the testing that we have, not in terms of the numbers or in terms of the quality.”

Pressed by reporters on the President’s characterisation of COVID-19, Ms McEnany said he was simply making a “factual point”.

“The president was making a factual point that most people will recover from coronavirus who get it, that there are a very small fraction of people who fall victim to coronavirus in a fatal way,” she said – never mind that the US has the highest coronavirus-related death toll in the world.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claims the US, under President Donald Trump, is a ‘leader in COVID-19’. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

The fatal risk of coronavirus is minimal because of the number of treatment options that have been developed in the past few months, Ms McEnany claimed.

“We have therapeutics, we have ways to treat this, and when you look at the mortality rates across the world, we are far below Italy. We are below Germany, we are below France and it is because of the great work we’ve put in.”

The US has outperformed these countries in terms of combating COVID-19 because Mr Trump “takes COVID seriously”, she said, adding the President is “monitoring” the spike in new cases in 37 of the nation’s states.

“He believes we, as a federal government, are equipped to handle those fires. We have great therapeutics, dexamethasone, convalescent plasma, Remdesivir that are used to treat this. We are aware of the spikes and we are on it here at the White House,” the 32-year-old told reporters.

“I think the world is looking at us as a leader in COVID-19.”

REPORTER: "How do you think the world is looking at the United States right now?"@PressSec: "I think the world is looking at us as a leader in COVID-19."

130,000 Americans have died in five months. The U.S. leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths. pic.twitter.com/Tepkuyzfnu
— CAP Action (@CAPAction) July 6, 2020

McEnany said the United States has outperformed other countries in terms of combating the coronavirus because Trump “takes COVID” seriously. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

The Trump administration have been claiming for months America is on its way to being free of coronavirus, with the President himself saying yesterday “we’re getting closer to fighting our way out of it”.

Last week, he told Fox Business he thought that “at some point” the virus will “sort of, just disappear, I hope”.

But the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, warned today the country is still “knee-deep in the first wave” of the pandemic, saying that the more than 50,000 new cases a day recorded several times in the last week were “a serious situation that we have to address immediately”.

Dr Fauci said he didn’t consider the increasing number of infections to be a “second wave” of COVID-19.

“I would say this would not be considered a wave,” he said, in a conversation with director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr Francis Collins.

“It was a surge, or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline that really never got down to where we wanted to go.

“We went up, never came down to baseline, and now it’s surging back up.”