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Trump says coronavirus shows need for better flu shot
New York Post
Mon Mar 2, 2020
Category: Politics
Area: Washington, DC (Hagerstown)
President Trump says the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak shows the need for a better flu shot.
Trump told a rally crowd Monday night that he lectured drug executives, visiting the White House to discuss the coronavirus, that they need to reduce annual deaths from the flu.
"I actually told the pharmaceutical companies you have to do a little bit better job on that vaccine," Trump said in Charlotte, North Carolina.
"You lose 27,000 people to the common flu. It can be much more," Trump said. "One year it went up to 100,000 people. I said nobody told me that. Nobody knew that."
Trump has invoked the flu before as he seeks to calm panicked markets and public concern about the coronavirus. On Monday, the Dow rebounded from a week-long nosedive. Trump celebrated the nearly 1,300 points, the single-biggest daily gain.
"You know, our opponents said, 'Oh, maybe he's in trouble, maybe the economy.' They'll do anything," Trump said. He jeeringly added: "I'm sure they were thrilled. You think our opponents were thrilled when they saw the stock market today?"
Since the weekend, six people died from the virus in the US There are cases of unknown origin in California and Washington state, and researchers say there may be hundreds of undetected infections.
Visitors to a White House gathering of drug executives on Monday included GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley, Gilead CEO David O'Day, and Johnson and Johnson chief scientific officer Paul Stoffels.
Trump said at the rally that there may be a vaccine "relatively soon" and a treatment "even sooner" for the coronavirus.
Globally there are nearly 90,000 cases of the coronavirus, with more than 3,000 deaths. The vast majority are in China.
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