Trump claims Florida ‘doing well’ as cases pass 1.25m with death toll nearly seven times that of Japan

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-claims-florida-doing-well-213238433.html

 

The Independent
Alex Woodward
Sat, December 26, 2020, 4:32 PM EST

Donald Trump, while spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, falsely claimed the state is “doing well" amid the coronavirus pandemic while states with Democratic governors are “absolutely ruining the lives of so many people” with stringent lockdown measures.

More than 1.2 million Covid-19 infections have been reported in Florida, whose Republican governor Ron DeSantis is a staunch Trump ally.

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More than 21,000 people in the state have died from coronavirus-related illness since the onset of the pandemic. Roughly 23,000 people have died from the coronavirus in California, a state with roughly twice as many people as Florida.

Florida’s death toll is roughly seven times greater than Japan’s, which has a population of more than 126 million.

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December has become the deadliest month of 2020, with more than 57,000 coronavirus-linked deaths through the month up to 23 December, and an average of 2,500 deaths every day.

Nationwide surges in infections are being driven by cases in the South and in the West.

Cases in Arizona, California, Florida, Tennessee and Texas account for 40 per cent of all new cases reported with the past week, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

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He also rejected economic relief measures to temporarily help keep Americans at home and businesses closed to keep infections at bay; he is currently refusing to sign a federal spending bill with $900bn in aid that extends unemployment benefits as well an eviction moratorium and provides direct payments of $600 to most Americans.