President Donald Trump has announced a plan to distribute 100 million rapid COVID-19 tests. Trump hopes that distributing these tests will encourage educators to reopen schools across the country for in-person teaching.
“In the old days when we just started this, you remember we’d go out and we’d have to find these massive laboratories with tremendously expensive equipment. Now we’re down to something that you’ll see that is really from a different planet,” he said during a press conference on Monday.
He makes this sudden push as the global COVID-19 death toll surpasses one million. Within the United States, 32 states are seeing a sudden increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. This has resulted in approximately 43,000 new cases per day nationwide, a 23% increase from two weeks ago. There has been a significant increase in Midwestern states like Wisconsin, which saw record increases over the weekend.
“This should not cause undue alarm,” he said in response to the increase in cases.
In recent weeks, Trump has held rallies in several states where participants have not all practiced social distancing or wearing masks. During a recent rally, he went as far as to say that the virus affects “virtually nobody.”
