Trump: Georgia reopening too soon

Official claims he was ousted for urging caution on coronavirus drug touted by president

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday praised governors for working to open their state's economies but also said he strongly disagreed with Georgia's push to reopen amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Trump said fellow Republican Brian Kemp of Georgia had gone too far by allowing barbershops, nail salons, tattoo parlors, beauty salons, spas and other businesses to open later this week.

"I think it's too soon," Trump said, adding that he had told Kemp, but said, "He has to do what he thinks is right."

"I love those people that use all of those things, the spas, the beauty parlors, barbershops, tattoo parlors, I love them," Trump said. "But they can wait a little bit longer. Just a little bit, not much, because safety has to predominate."

Trump's top adviser on the pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, said mitigation strategies were working, setting the stage for states to reopen. He urged Kemp to proceed with caution.

"If I were advising the governor, I would tell him, be careful, I would tell him not to just turn the switch on and go," Fauci said, adding that Georgia could see a rebound of the virus, further harming the state's economy.

At his news conference, Trump was asked about Rick Bright, who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine.

Bright said on Wednesday in a statement that he was removed from his post after he pressed for a rigorous vetting of a coronavirus treatment — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — embraced by Trump, before it was scientifically tested for efficacy with the coronavirus.

Asked if Bright had been forced out, Trump said,

"I never heard of him. A guy says he was pushed out of a job. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. You'd have to hear the other side."

Bright was dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response. He was given a job at the National Institutes of Health.

In his statement, Bright said, "I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit."

Bright said, "Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit."

In his statement, Bright said, "I also resisted efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections."

"I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way," he said.

At the outset of the briefing, Trump summoned the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, to clarify his remark that the second wave of novel coronavirus in the fall could be worse than the current situation.

Redfield made the widely circulated comment in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that the health expert was misquoted and would be putting out a statement.

Redfield, however, said he was quoted accurately. "I think it's really important to emphasize what I didn't say: I didn't say that this was going to be worse," Redfield said.

"I said it was going to be more difficult and potentially complicated because we're going to have flu and coronavirus circulating at the same time."

Trump downplayed the chances that the coming fall or winter could bring another serious wave of COVID-19 cases combined with outbreaks of seasonal flu.

"We will not go through what we went through in the last few months," Trump said. "It may not come back at all."

Instead, Trump said there could be "embers of corona" that could combine with flu to create "a mess".

Fauci said the country does need to be prepared for a second wave.

"We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that," said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Reuters contributed to this story.