US President Donald Trump on Saturday 18 April 2020, said that several U.S. states would begin next week opening some businesses while observing coronavirus-related precautions.
Texas and Vermont will allow certain businesses to reopen Monday, with Montana beginning on Friday, Trump said during a COVID-19 briefing at the White House.
“We continue to see a number of positive signs that the virus has passed its peak,” he said, adding, “Our testing is getting better and better,” although he offered no concrete evidence.
Other states’ governors, however, have warned they will not act prematurely to reopen their economies until there is more testing so as not to increase coronavirus infections.
Hundreds of people in several cities around the country have protested against the lockdown measures put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The protesters are angry at the economic cost of the confinement orders.
Trump also said during the briefing that China could face unspecified consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the coronavirus. The administration has said it doesn’t rule out that the novel coronavirus was spread — accidentally — from a laboratory researching bats in Wuhan, where the outbreak began late last year.
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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, however, has rejected U.S. media reports on the subject, saying there is “no scientific basis” for the assertion. He has previously alleged that the U.S. military may have brought the virus into China.
Research is still evolving, but the leading theory is that infection among humans began at an animal market in Wuhan, probably from an animal that got the virus from a bat.
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