President Donald Trump said on Monday he was considering how to restart business life when a 15-day shutdown ends next week, even as the highly contagious virus spreads rapidly and poorly equipped hospitals struggle with a wave of deadly cases.
However, senior Democrats and Republicans said they were close to a deal on a $2 trillion coronavirus economic stimulus package, raising hopes that the divided U.S. Congress could soon act to try to limit the pandemic’s economic fallout.
“We are very close,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, as the chamber opened its session yesterday morning.
The Republican-led chamber’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said a few hours later that talks had been “very productive.”
A Republican, Trump is seeking to win re-election in November on a promise of economic growth.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat whose state of New York has become the epicentre of the U.S. outbreak with 25,665 cases, strongly opposed allowing people to travel, socialise and get back to workplaces too quickly.
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“If you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest. No American is going to say accelerate the economy at the cost of human life,” he said.
Cuomo said the projected need for hospital beds in New York at the peak of the outbreak has jumped to 140,000, compared with the 53,000 that are available and that the apex of the outbreak could still be 14-21 days away
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, told CNN yesterday: “We don’t think that we’re going to be in any way ready to be out of this in five or six days or so, or whenever this 15 days is up from the time that they started this imaginary clock.”
