Coronavirus will ‘get worse’: Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump has said the Covid-19 pandemic in the US will “get worse before it gets better”, in a marked change of tone during his first White House coronavirus press briefing in nearly three months.

Some areas of our country are doing very well, others are doing less well,” the president told reporters on Tuesday, hours after health authorities in California confirmed the state has registered more than 400,000 coronavirus cases.

His comments stand in contrast to his rosier predictions in recent weeks that the virus would “just disappear”, and come after caseloads have spiked in California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and other states in the US sunbelt in the past few weeks.

When asked whether he would be responsible if the pandemic gets worse and people continue dying, Mr Trump said: “The virus will disappear. It will disappear.”

The jump in cases has strained healthcare systems and is raising fresh concerns about whether US authorities can contain the spread of the deadly virus. More than 140,000 Americans have died since coronavirus began spreading across the US earlier this year, and on Tuesday more than 1,000 deaths were reported.

Dhaka/Mukul