Nine days after testing positive for Covid-19, US President Donald Trump spoke to several hundred supporters at the White House on Saturday, hoping to relaunch his campaign within four weeks of the election . “I’m fine,” he told the crowd.
Massed in the gardens of the White House, the sympathizers of the president, were unmasked for the most part. The head of state, who was not wearing a mask either, assured the crowd that the virus “was going to disappear”, that it was even “in the process of disappearing”.
“We are producing powerful therapies and drugs, we are curing the sick, we are going to get over it and the vaccine will arrive very, very quickly, in record time,” he said. “Science and medicine will eradicate the Chinese virus once and for all, we will get rid of it all over the world. You see big outbreaks in Europe, Canada […], but it will disappear, it is disappearing and the vaccines will help ”, he judged.
No longer considered contagious
This speech comes just before two election meetings scheduled for next week, in addition to the one in Florida on Monday: one in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the other in Iowa on Wednesday. The president-candidate is thus actively resuming the campaign, his doctors ensuring that the dials are green.
In a statement, White House doctor Sean Conley said Donald Trump was no longer contagious: “Tonight, I am happy to announce that in addition to the fact that the president meets all the criteria of the CDC (Editor’s note : Centers for the prevention and fight against diseases) for a safe end to isolation, the Covid PCR test this morning shows, in view of currently recognized standards, that it is no longer considered to be risky to transmit ( virus) to other people. “
According to him, tests have shown that “there is no longer any index of active replication of the virus” and that Donald Trump’s viral load “is decreasing”. However, he did not indicate that the head of state was no longer positive. The president does not have a fever and his symptoms have “improved”, said the White House doctor, stressing that he would continue to monitor his state of health as Donald Trump resumes the course normal activities.
It is likely that people with low viral load levels are no longer contagious, but no threshold has been set by the medical community. Dr Conley said his patient had experienced his first symptoms ten days before. For more severe cases, CDC guidelines say isolation and precautions can be stopped for up to 20 days after symptoms appear. However, the intensity of Donald Trump’s case has not been communicated …
Ten points ahead in the polls for Biden
“More than 213,000 Americans have died from this virus, and the harsh reality is that it could have been avoided,” Joe Biden tweeted Saturday. The former vice-president of Barack Obama, who is now nearly ten points ahead in national polls and has also consolidated his advantage in voting intentions at the level of the decisive states for the election, continues his campaign at his pace.
In the Republican camp, the concern is more and more palpable. Some tenors are openly alarmed by the development of the campaign. “If on election day people are angry […], we could lose the White House, and both houses of Congress […], it could be a bloodbath, ”warned Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
Donald Trump, he will repeat that the polls are wrong Hogan Gidley, spokesperson for his campaign, insisted on Fox News on Saturday on his desire to speak “directly to the Americans, without the filter of the media”. “The president wants to go on the ground,” he said.
Original article by : www.leparisien.fr