Trump raises the prospect of lifting the lockdown knowing people will get infected

Donald Trump has raised the prospect of lifting coronavirus lockdowns across the United States, arguing the nation cannot be ‘destroyed’ and ‘we have to get back to work’.  

The president’s words during his daily briefing Saturday raise the prospect of reopening businesses and services knowing people will get infected. 

Trump said: ‘We have to get back to work. We don’t want to be doing this for months and months and months.’

The president said reopening will be a ‘big decision’. He has previously argued the ‘cure cannot be worse than the problem.’

Speaking Saturday Trump added: ‘Mitigation does work, but again we’re not going to destroy our country. We have to get back. Because you know, at a certain point, you lose more people this way through all of the problems caused than you will with what we’re doing right now.

‘We went this extra period of time but I said it from the beginning the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. At a certain point some hard decisions are going to have to be made.’ 

Trump also reportedly told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that the football season will still begin in September in a conference call on Saturday as the president claimed we ‘have to open our country again’.  

The president later tweeted a promise to Little League players that they will be back on the baseball field soon telling them to ‘hang in there’ after the league was halted in March.    

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States have increased by more than 100,000 in the past three days as the death toll topped 8,500 on Saturday. 

New York City continues to be the epicenter of the nation’s outbreak where 2,624 people have lost their lives. 

The country set a grim global record on Saturday with the number of deaths from coronavirus leaping by 1,497 in just one day. 

The US’ epicenter for the outbreak is yet to reach its ‘apex’ but its hospitals and morgues are near breaking point already. 

The president warned Saturday of the ‘toughest time’, telling reporters: ‘This will be probably the toughest week. There will be a lot of death, unfortunately, but a lot less death if this was not done.’ 

Trump had originally wanted to open up the country by Easter, but on Sunday decided to keep the federal social distancing policies in place through the end of April.  

At the top of his mind had been whether the ‘cure’ – closing down all non-essential American businesses – was worse than the disease itself. 

He still wrestled with that choice throughout Saturday’s briefing. 

‘This country was not designed to be closed,’ he complained from the podium.   

At noon on Saturday Trump met with all the major league sports commissioners. 

ESPN reported that he said on the call that he predicted the NFL season would kick off in time. 

 At the briefing he refused to give a when, disputing he had said August. 

‘I want fans back in the arenas,’ he said. ‘Whenever we’re ready, as soon as we can.’     

The president then predicted it would be sooner than later.  

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits last week has shot to a record 6.6 million – as layoffs increased amid the coronavirus pandemic and more states enforced stay-at-home orders.

New claims for unemployment benefits rose to 6.65 million in the week ending March 28, according to figures released by the Department of Labor on Thursday.

The number of first-time applications for jobless benefits was double the previous record of 3.3 million new claims filed for the week ending March 21.

It means that roughly 10 million Americans have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment in the two weeks that the coronavirus started rapidly spreading across the country.

About 90 percent of Americans are now under some form of lockdown – up from less than 50 percent just a few weeks ago.

The president was joined Saturday by coronavirus taskforce members including Vice President Mike Pence – who reminded reporters that one of the deadliest weeks of the coronavirus outbreak will be the Christian holy week in the lead-up to Easter. 

Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci were also on hand, as was Dr. Stephen Hahn of the Food and Drug Administration. 

Dr Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, warned to avoid going to the grocery store or the pharmacy unless it is essential for the next two weeks to prevent further spread of coronavirus. 

 The advice was directed mainly at residents of Pennsylvania, Colorado and Washington, D.C. who are still only on the upside of the outbreak curve, meaning it is essential that people remain at home and practice social distancing now to lessen the virus’ impact.

Fauci, taking the podium early in the briefing, said that the doctors have seen that the policies of social distancing have had an effect in slowing the spread of the virus. 

‘I want to actually just plea as I do …  as sobering and as difficult as this is, what we are doing is making a difference,’ Fauci said. 

As the nation looks on in despair, other states are fast on track to become the new deadly hotspots.  

Michigan now has more cases than California, with 12,744 in Michigan and 12,603 in California. Outside of New York City, Detroit is the metro area with the highest death toll, with 223 dead in Wayne County. 

Louisiana has become a key concern as it reported a jump in deaths to 409 on Saturday.

The Gulf state’s largest city, New Orleans, where Mardi Gras celebrations in late February are believed to have helped spread the virus before social distancing orders were imposed, has become a focal point of the health crisis.

Patients in New Orleans are dying at twice the rate per capita as in New York.

Louisiana Governor John Edwards said he spoke with Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday – and that he had been promised an additional 200 ventilators from the national stockpile.