Recent spikes in coronavirus cases in the nation’s heartland are just the latest sign that President Donald Trump’s push to re-open American society is coming at a human cost, even as he publicly downplays the risk.
On Monday, NBC News reported exclusively that unreleased White House coronavirus task force tables show that communities from Charlotte and Phoenix to Minneapolis and the Houston suburbs experienced major surges in week-over-week positive tests for COVID-19. The data include massive increases in some rural counties, including those where prison outbreaks are now being reported for the first time.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Senate Committee Tuesday that “little spikes” could lead to a major resurgence of the disease if states and localities ease restrictions too soon.
At the same time, in documents obtained by NBC News and reported here first, the task force is reporting internally that it has not yet achieved its own goals for re-opening. In those documents, prepared late last week and marked “privileged and confidential,” federal officials wrote that while they have “completed” guidelines for states to re-open, they still haven’t developed a vaccine or treatments, ensured “adequate access to laboratory diagnostics,” or fully enabled front-line workers to “obtain and preserve critical medical supplies.”
