Top panel gets reprieve in Trump U-turn

A day after end flagged for virus task force, it will stay but with focus shift

In a swift U-turn, United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the emergency task force handling his administration's response to the coronavirus outbreak would not be wound down after all and instead continue indefinitely.

Trump, in a series of tweets, said the task force may "add or subtract people" but will remain in place and focus on safely bringing the hardest-hit country out of its economic lockdown, as well as on finding a vaccine and other treatments for COVID-19. Just a day earlier, the president had said the panel would be broken up.

At a White House event honoring National Nurses Day on Wednesday, Trump said he would announce new members of his task force by Monday. He added that he had thought he would be able to wind down the task force sooner, but had no idea how popular it was.

Vice-President Mike Pence, who leads the group, said on Tuesday that the task force could be wound down within weeks, but Trump's Wednesday tweets appeared to contradict that assertion.

"I think we're starting to look at the Memorial Day (May 25) window, early June window" for shutting it down, Pence said on Tuesday. He added that coordination of the response to COVID-19 would be moved on to federal agencies.

Trump, on his first trip outside Washington, in weeks, had on Tuesday defended the timing of the move, saying the US could not be "closed for the next five years".

"Mike Pence and the task force have done a great job," Trump said during the visit to a mask factory in Arizona."But we're now looking at a little bit of a different form and that form is safety and opening and we'll have a different group probably set up for that."

He said two leading medical experts who have played prominent roles on the task force－doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx－would stay on as advisers after the group was dismantled.

The US had reported 1,228,608 cases as of Thursday, with the death toll at 73,431. Worldwide, the virus has infected 3,753,219 people, according to a tally by the Johns Hopkins University.

An epidemiologist at Yale University on Wednesday launched one of the harshest attacks on the US response to the pandemic, saying it was "close to genocide by default".

Gregg Gonsalves, co-director of Yale's Global Health Justice Partnership, on Wednesday morning tweeted: "What proportion of the deaths will be among African-Americans, Latinos, other people of color? This is getting awfully close to genocide by default. What else do you call mass death by public policy?"

Gonsalves dug in on his claims, saying later in a tweet that he was "being serious here: what is happening in the US is purposeful, considered negligence, omission, failure to act by our leaders. Can they be held responsible under international law?"

Citing an internal document acquired from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, The New York Times reported earlier that daily coronavirus-related deaths in the country could nearly double to reach about 3,000 by June 1. It also predicted that new cases will probably average at 200,000 a day by the end of May, up from the current daily rate of about 25,000.

Criteria to lift restrictions

On the global front, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday that the risk of returning to lockdowns is very real if countries emerging from pandemic restrictions do not move extremely carefully.

According to the WHO, criteria for easing lockdown measures include that a country must have a strong surveillance system, cases must be declining and transmission be controlled. Its health system capacities must be in place to detect, isolate, test and treat every case and trace every contact.

A country's outbreak risks must be minimized and preventive measures put in place in workplaces, schools and other locations where it's essential for people to go.

Pan Mengqi in Beijing and Xinhua contributed to this story.