Vice President Mike Pence said Friday he will visit Arizona, Florida and Texas in the coming days for a ground report on the coronavirus, acknowledging a stunning surge in cases across the South while defending the Trump campaign’s decision to resume rallies that do not observe social distancing.
Mr. Pence repeatedly pointed to nationwide progress against the pandemic, highlighting the regional nature of the surge and a declining death rate, even as he called on young adults who account for over half of the new cases to avoid spreading the disease to vulnerable Americans.
“The reality is we’re in a much better place,” Mr. Pence said at the Department of Health and Human Services. “We still have work to do.”
Mr. Pence also defended the Trump campaign’s decision to resume political rallies in places that had seen an uptick, including a youth meet-up in Arizona. He said the right to assemble is enshrined in the Constitution and “we have an election coming up this fall.”
“We still want to give people the freedom to participate in the political process,” Mr. Pence said.
The vice president said Mr. Trump — who canceled a weekend trip to his New Jersey golf resort — directed him to brief the country on the recent surge, which is spread across the Sun Belt from coast to coast. Florida on Friday shattered its one-day record for new cases, reporting nearly 9,000 from the previous day, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is backtracking on some of his reopening plans.
Deborah Birx, a key scientist on the White House coronavirus task force, said officials sat up and took notice of the spike in Texas when the percent of people testing positive rose alongside the increasing number of overall tests.
Mr. Pence said he will head to the Lone Star State on Sunday before he heads to Arizona on Tuesday and Florida on Thursday. He said these states haven’t made any urgent requests to the federal government but he administration is ready to surge supplies and personnel, if called upon.
Health Secretary Alex Azar said expanded testing is responsible for some of the rise in cases. But as hospitals see more patients, the secretary said he is confident the states have the capacity and supplies they need.
He also noted strides in using investigational drugs such as remdesivir to treat the disease as companies and researchers scramble to develop a vaccine.
Mr. Pence said his “hope and his prayer” is that deaths will not accompany the Sun Belt surge in the coming weeks. Increases in reported deaths typically lag a couple weeks behind reports of new cases.
The spike is coming at an awkward juncture for Mr. Trump, who faces reelection and is pushing to reopen the economy even as his own experts call on Americans to be cautious.
“We are facing a serious problem in certain areas of the country,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Fauci said there is no use in casting blame for the surge, but warned the disease is global and the country is interconnected, so everyone has to do their part.
Younger persons tend to have mild symptoms or none at all, making it difficult to root out their infections. Even if a newly infected person feels fine, Dr. Fauci warned, they run the risk of prolonging the pandemic by spreading the pathogen to others.
“You have a societal responsibility, because if we want to end this outbreak, really end it … we’ve got to realize that we are part of the process,” Dr. Fauci said.
Mr. Pence acknowledged the steep toll of the virus since it took off in early March, with nearly 2.5 million infections and almost 125,000 deaths reported.
He used the bulk of his remarks to highlight progress in the fight, however.
While 16 states are seeing a worsening trend, the other two-thirds have seen a “measure of stability” since the end of Mr. Trump’s directive to work and learn at home and avoid gatherings from mid-March to the end of April.
Mr. Pence said Americans’ willingness to comply with the shutdown guidance and Mr. Trump’s bans on travel from China and Europe saved lives.
Retail sales “are rolling,” he said, and New York and the broader tri-state area have made tremendous strides after getting slammed.
“We have made truly remarkable progress in moving our country forward,” Mr. Pence said. “We want to open our economy up … even while we take and continue to take the steps necessary to save lives and protect the American people.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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