Trump’s lockdown exit plan ‘delusional,’ say opponents

US President Donald Trump’s administration clashes with state governors on Sunday, over lifting coronavirus lockdowns, in a standoff embittered by his support for protests against the restrictions.

Vice President Mike Pence said that every US state has the ability to do enough testing to allow preliminary re-opening of the economy and a partial restart of normal life in America.

But some state governors say testing capacity is far behind levels needed to avoid sparking new outbreaks of the virus.

The United States has so far recorded 735,000 coronavirus cases — the highest number of any country — and registered 39,000 deaths.

“We believe the testing that we have today… once we activate all of the labs that can do coronavirus testing, is sufficient for any state in America to move into phase one,” Pence tells FOX News Sunday.

“Phase one” ends stay-at-home restrictions for healthy people, and allows restaurants, cinemas, sporting venues, places of worship, and gyms to re-open with physical distancing.

“We have every confidence that we can have a sufficient amount of testing to be able to re-open America,” Pence says, vowing to double the numbers of tests.

But Virginia Governor Ralph Northam pushes back at the Republican administration’s claims that there was enough testing, saying, “That’s just delusional.”

Gretchen Whitmer, Democratic governor of Michigan, says, “We could double or even triple the number of tests that we’re executing daily if we had the swabs and reagents,” and calls for more federal government help.

As the US struggles to quell the mounting death toll, political battle lines are also being drawn ahead of the November election as Trump seeks to reduce damage to his chances of holding onto office.

— AFP