What Time Is President Trump's Coronavirus Briefing Today? White House Gives COVID-19 Updates
Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force will hold a press briefing Thursday to update the nation on new developments regarding the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The press briefing will take place at 5 p.m. ET. The event can be live-streamed on the White House's official website or can be watched on C-SPAN. Fox News airs these daily briefings in their entirety.
The United States has over 639,600 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 30,985 deaths, as well as 52,738 recoveries, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. has completed over 3.3 million tests and that the nation's "aggressive strategy" to slow the virus' spread is "very strongly working."
"New cases are declining throughout the New York metropolitan area. Cases in the Detroit and Denver metro areas are flat. Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and St. Louis are showing great signs of progress. New cases in Houston and New Orleans are declining," the president said in his opening remarks. "The battle continues, but the data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases."
Based on this data, Trump said, he will be finalizing guidelines "for states reopening the country," which he will elaborate on at Thursday's briefing.
Dr. Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the Coronavirus Task Force, said Wednesday that states and metro areas are being looked at individually, as some states "never really had a peak" because of the mitigation guidelines that were implemented and others have yet to reach 1,000 confirmed cases. Vice President Mike Pence, head of the Coronavirus Task Force, said that 24 percent of the counties in the U.S. have no confirmed cases of the virus and that half of all states have less than 2,500 cases.
Even with the progress seen across the country, Birx reiterated the fact that this "highly contagious virus" can be easily spread in large gatherings
"To all of you who are out there that would like to join together and just have that dinner party for 20, don't do it yet. Continue to follow the presidential guidelines," Birx said.
"We really appreciate the work of the American people. We see as a country we are improving. We see as metro areas we are improving. We see as communities, as counties and as states we are improving. But that also still requires everyone to continue to social distance," she said.
