Covid-19: cases grow in US as Trump pushes promise of a malaria drug

President Trump has told Americans that the covid-19 threat is serious, reversing his earlier position of telling Americans to relax because the coronavirus threat would soon pass. He called himself a “wartime president” and invoked an old defence production act to direct factories to produce protective equipment for healthcare workers and ventilators. On 19 March, Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Engineering and Science reported that the US had 13 678 cases of covid-18 and 200 deaths. The states of California, New York, and Washington are most affected.1 New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, asked for military aid to help deliver 15 000 ventilators and millions of surgical masks, gowns, coveralls, gloves, and face masks. On 19 March, the number of confirmed cases in the city almost doubled in a day to 3615. …