The coronavirus pandemic is worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbour, US President Donald Trump has said as more than 72,000 Americans had died due to COVID-19 and over 1.26M tested positive for the disease, according to the latest figures.
“We went through the worst attack we have ever had in our country. This is really the worst attack we have ever had. This is worse than Pearl Harbour. This is worse than the World Trade Centre. There has never been an attack like this,” Trump said.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank project the American economy into recession and according to the White House, the country is likely to experience a minus 15-20 per cent growth in the second quarter of the current financial year.
Trump said he would like to see schools open, wherever possible.
“I would say that until everything is perfect, I think that the teachers that are a certain age, perhaps you say over 60, especially if they have a problem with heart or diabetes or any one of a number of things, I think that they should not be teaching in schools for a while. And everybody would understand that probably. That we understand,” he said.
In an interview to Fox News, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the Trump administration knows enough to be confident that the deadly coronavirus emerged from a laboratory in China’s Wuhan.
“I cannot say much about the intelligence we have collected with respect to this. But we know enough now to be confident of this,” he said in an interview to Fox News.
Pompeo said he has seen evidence that this likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
