Fight Against The Coronavirus Pandemic
According to U.S. government health officials, USA is prepared for the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
In a presumed effort to quell any panic, President Donald Trump went to the airwaves to assure the American public there was nothing to fear from coronavirus.
The White House has an action plan ready to counter the pandemic in the midst of fears that a pandemic may kill up to two million Americans causing economic havoc.
President Trump has launched a task force to monitor and prevent the spread of the coronavirus that has spread to multiple countries, The task force, led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, will be in charge of “efforts to monitor, contain, and mitigate the spread of the virus” while also keeping Americans informed on the matter, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
On March 6, 2020, the President signed into law: H.R. 6074, the “Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020,” which provides additional fiscal year 2020 emergency supplemental funding for combating the spread of the coronavirus at the local, State, national, and international levels and to prepare for the impacts that it may have on the Nation.
The US has been aggressively working to develop a vaccine. The agency in charge of overseeing the development of medicines, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, announced it that will be providing funding to French drug manufacturer Sanofi to research and develop a vaccine. The company worked to develop a vaccine for SARS, which is another type of coronavirus.
To date, 127,863 people worldwide have been infected with the coronavirus out of which 4,718 have died. Not yet reaching the levels of the 1918-1919 influenza epidemics which had killed 50 million people worldwide, the numbers for coronavirus continue to rise every day.
After initially sending out defective coronavirus tests, the CDC regrouped and re-sent new tests months after the breakout. As the numbers of infected and deaths grew throughout the world, the U.S. was NOT testing… thus reporting very low numbers. Once testing began in the U.S., the numbers began to grow rapidly.
The Trump administration has also used military resources to contain the virus inside our borders. They have been used to give quarantine assistance and/or be used in any appropriate situation.
People returning from overseas travel were quarantined at March Air Reserve Base, California, and the DOD has identified housing support for up to 1,000 people at four bases who may need to be quarantined.
The U.S. continues to look for long term action plans and methods to slow the virus from spreading, get enough critical medical supply and limit if not stop this inevitable chaos. The government is trying to gear itself up against a worst-case scenario of almost 2 million deaths due to this deadly virus.