Former US Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has urged President Donald Trump to order the production of more face masks and other medical supplies over the next couple of days, warning that “lives are at stake”.
Biden tweeted on Monday that he is "issuing this challenge to the President: in the next 48 hours, direct the production and distribution of respirator masks, gloves, protective face shields and gowns to fill every supply request made by a governor to the federal government”.
I am issuing this challenge to the President: in the next 48 hours, direct the production and distribution of respirator masks, gloves, protective face shields and gowns to fill every supply request made by a governor to the federal government.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 30, 2020
Lives are at stake.
The remarks were the latest in a series of tweets in which he blamed POTUS for dragging his feet on responding to the coronavirus outbreak in the US, claiming that the Trump administration has “failed the American people”.
Biden argued that COVID-19 is “not Donald Trump's fault, but his inept response is”.
“He ignored the warnings for months, downplayed the threat it posed, and failed to take the action needed to combat the outbreak. It's one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in our history”, the former vice president asserted in a tweet on Friday.
Trump Extends COVID-19 Guidelines
As for the Monday tweet, it comes after Trump announced that he is extending nationwide social distancing guidelines for another 30 days, following a warning by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that the coronavirus pandemic could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in the US.
“The better you do, the faster this whole nightmare will end. Therefore, we will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread”, Trump told reporters on Sunday.
According to him, “the modeling estimates that the peak in death rate is likely to hit in two weeks, […] therefore, the next two weeks and during this period it's very important that everyone strongly follow the guidelines”.
The guidelines, which stipulated people staying home and avoiding social gatherings, were due to expire on Monday. Last week, Trump said that he planned to relax the measures and even singled out Easter (12 April) as a potential date when the US could return to normalcy.
“We have to get our country back to work. Our country wants to be back at work. This cure is worse than the problem. Again, people, many people - in my opinion more people - are going to die if we allow this to continue. We have to get back to work", Trump told a Fox News town hall event on Tuesday, pledging “not to turn the country off”.
Also last week, POTUS attributed the drastic spike in COVID-19 diagnoses in the US to increased testing for the virus, referring to the “tremendous number of people” that undergo tests on a daily basis.
The statement came after The New York Times reported that according to its database, the US had become the country with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, surpassing China, where the virus originally broke out in late 2019.
At the moment, the US retains the highest number of confirmed cases (more than 142,000), while the highest death toll has been registered in Italy (over 10,700 people), according to official data.
