Coronavirus updates: COVID-19 cases in U.S. top 1 million

President Trump on Tuesday said the coronavirus is “going to go away,” repeating a line he’s said in the past that contradicts his own health experts. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s leading infectious diseases expert, has said the deadly virus will not disappear, and the U.S. should be prepared for another wave in fall. 

Mr. Trump, making the remarks in an East Room event with businesses that turned into a press conference, said a vaccine is looking promising, but he thinks the virus is going to go away, and if it does return in a “modified” form in fall the U.S. will handle it. 

CBS News White House correspondent Ben Tracy asked, “Mr. President, you said at the top of your remarks that you feel the worst of the pandemic is behind us. But without a treatment, without a vaccine, and states now reopening, how can you be so sure?”

The president responded: “Well I think that like other things, we’re going to hopefully we’re going to come up with a vaccine, you never know about a vaccine, but tremendous progress has been made. Johnson & Johnson and Oxford and lots of good things, you’ve been hearing the same things as I do. Tremendous progress has been made, we think, on a vaccine. You always have to say think and then you have to test it, and that takes a period of time. But uh, a lot of movement and a lot of progress has been made on a vaccine.” 

“But I think what happens is it’s going to go away,” Mr. Trump added. “This is going to go away. And whether it comes back in a modified form in the fall, we’ll be able to handle it, we’ll be able to put out spurts, and we’re very prepared to handle it. We’ve learned a lot, we’ve learned a lot about it, the invisible enemy.”

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