President Joe Biden declared in a TV interview that the pandemic is over, startling his own health officials who said that this was not part of prepared remarks of the leader of the nation where over two million COVID-19 cases were recorded in the last 28 days, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
Two administration officials told Politico that Biden's health officials were caught off guard after the president said during his interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" that "the pandemic is over."
“We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it ... but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing,” he added.
Biden’s statement about the pandemic during the interview was the most distinct and straightforward answer he has made since about the health crisis since he won the race to the White House in 2020.
But Biden made it clear that he is not taking the overall effects of the virus lightly.
“The impact on the psyche of the American people as a consequence of the pandemic is profound,” he said.
“Think of how that has changed everything. You know, people’s attitudes about themselves, their families, about the state of the nation, about the state of their communities. And so there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, a great deal of uncertainty. And we lost a million people.”
The New York Times reported that around 70,000 coronavirus cases are still being listed daily in the US — the lowest since early May of this year.
Although hospital utilization rates have improved, there are still 35,000 people being admitted to medical centers due to the virus every day for the past two weeks.
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