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President Trump returned to defending a discredited drug at a White House briefing Tuesday evening in which he also made claims about the trajectory of the virus that clash with his own administration’s assessments and bemoaned his low approval ratings.
The president defended sharing a version of a video promoting the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine that was deleted Monday night by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which all said that the video had violated their policies on sharing misinformation about the virus.
He claimed that “you can look at large portions of our country — it’s corona-free,” even as federal officials distributed a new report finding that 21 states had outbreaks so severe that they were in the “red zone.” Twenty-eight states were in the “yellow zone,” and only one state, Vermont, was in the “green zone.”
And he lamented that health officials in his administration, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, were more popular than he is. “He’s got this high approval rating,” Mr. Trump said. “Why don’t I have a high approval rating — and the administration — with respect to the virus?”
“They’re highly thought of, but nobody likes me,” he said. “It can only be my personality.”
Mr. Trump continued to promote the use of hydroxychloroquine, which several major studies have concluded is not effective in treating the virus. “I happen to think it works in the early stages,” he said, and claimed that “from a safety standpoint it’s safe.”
Federal health officials have warned of dangers.
In June the Food and Drug Administration revoked an emergency use authorization for the use of hydroxychloroquine and another malaria drug, chloroquine, in the treatment of Covid-19. In a July 1 update, the F.D.A. said there were reports of serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues, including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries and liver problems and failure.
In revoking the emergency use authorization, the F.D.A. said, “We made this determination based on recent results from a large, randomized clinical trial in hospitalized patients that found these medicines showed no benefit for decreasing the likelihood of death or speeding recovery.”
Asked on “Good Morning America” about the president’s sharing of claims about hydroxychloroquine, Dr. Fauci said that the “prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in coronavirus disease.”
At the briefing, Mr. Trump was asked about one of the speakers in the video, who identified herself as Dr. Stella Immanuel. She claimed “you don’t need masks” to prevent the spread of the virus and spoke of treating hundreds of virus patients with hydroxychloroquine. He called her “impressive.”
“She was on air along with many other doctors,” he said. “They were big fans of hydroxychloroquine. And I thought she was very impressive in the sense that from where she came — I don’t know which country she comes from — but she says she’s had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients. And I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her.”
Dr. Immanuel has drawn scrutiny for a series of religious sermons posted on her YouTube channel, in which she linked medical conditions to sex with demons and witches, as well as making references to alien DNA.
When a reporter mentioned Dr. Immanuel’s background to the president, including comments attributed to her that “doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens,” Mr. Trump responded, “I know nothing about her,” and abruptly ended the briefing moments later.
Key Data of the DAY
A new federal report found that the number of states with outbreaks serious enough to place them in the “red zone” had grown to 21, and urged officials in them to impose more restrictions.
The 21 states now in the “red zone” — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin — were designated as such because they had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people in the past week. Three more states were added to the most serious category since a similar report dated July 14: Missouri, North Dakota and Wisconsin.
The findings in the new report, which contained profiles of each state, were sent to state officials by the White House’s coronavirus task force and obtained by The New York Times.
The federal government prepares regular reports on the response to the coronavirus. The following report, dated July 26, was distributed to states by the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force.
The report, which was dated July 26, recommended that more restrictions be put in place in “red zone” states. But on Monday, a day later, President Trump called for more states to reopen.
“A lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening, and we’ll see what happens with them,” Mr. Trump said during a visit to North Carolina — one of the states in the red zone.
The report recommended that North Carolina “close establishments where social distancing and mask use cannot occur, such as bars” and “limit indoor dining to less than 25% of normal capacity.” It made similar recommendations for other hard-hit states, calling for reducing the occupancy of other businesses, closing gyms, and urging people to scale back their public interactions and activities to a quarter of what they normally are.
Mask mandates were consistently recommended for states and cities where the virus is spreading. Noting that Arizona, included in the red zone, had seen cases level off in recent days, the report credited its “aggressive mitigation efforts of mask wearing, social distancing and closing bars.”
But some governors continue to be resistant. When Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, visited Tennessee on Monday, she spoke with Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, about mask mandates, but he was loath to issue a statewide order. “We talked about statewide mandates; we also talked about alternative approaches,” he said afterward.
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