Donald Trump Jr says coronavirus deaths ‘are almost nothing’
Donald Trump Jr. has said coronavirus deaths in the US ‘are almost nothing’ – on a day when nearly 1,000 new fatalities were recorded.
In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, the president’s oldest son said people were talking about ‘rising cases’ instead of deaths because ‘the numbers are almost nothing’.
On the day of Donald Trump Jr.’s interview, 971 people died. The previous day, 996 people died and 985 died 24 hours earlier.
The seven-day rolling average for daily new deaths rose over the past two weeks from 724 to 787, according to data up until October 28 from John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre.
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He told Ms Ingraham: ‘I put it on my Instagram a couple of days ago, because I went through the CDC, because I kept hearing about new infections.
‘Why are they talking — why aren’t they talking about deaths? Oh, oh! Because the numbers are almost nothing, because we’ve gotten control of thing and we understand how it works.
‘We have the therapeutics to deal with it. If you look at my Instagram, [Covid deaths have] gone to almost nothing. We are outperforming Europe in a positive way. We’ve gotten a hold of it.’
New coronavirus cases reached a record daily high on Wednesday with 78,981 recorded. Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News this was because testing had improved.
‘The rising case numbers are because they’re testing more. They don’t talk about that either,’ he said.
As with Europe, improved testing does account for some of the higher numbers but numerous medical professionals have spoken of cases going up in what many countries have conceded is a second wave.
Other data points to rising infections as testing could not explain the 52% rise in hospitalisation in the last month with the highest number of people in hospital for coronavirus, 45,045, since the peak in July, when that number was just under 60,000.
Whilst 15 states have a test positive rate of 10% or higher, an indicator of widespread transmission, other states have succeeded in halting previous surges and getting their numbers lower again.
The presidential election is just days away and up until October 30 the US has had 8,947,862 confirmed coronavirus cases and 228,675 deaths.
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