05/01/2020 - 13:45
- Clarín.com
- World
Although President Donald Trump continues to publicly downplay the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government already ordered in April more than 100,000 new body bags for victims of Covid-19, the disease that causes the coronavirus.
This was revealed by internal administration documents obtained by the NBC News chain .
The largest purchase was ordered, paradoxically, the day after President Trump projected that the death toll in the United States from the coronavirus would not exceed 50,000 or 60,000.
The coronavirus pandemic caused until this Friday in the US 62,544 deaths and 1,065,286 infections in the United States, the country with the most cases worldwide.
Coronavirus in the United States
Johns Hopkins University Infographic: Clarín
As reported by NBC on Friday, the federal government ordered more than 100,000 new body bags for COVID-19 victims in April.
The lot is a pending $ 5.1 million purchase order made by the Department of Homeland Security on April 21 to EM Oil Transport Inc. of Montebello, California, which advertises vehicles and construction materials and electronic products on its website.
The "human waste bags" have yet to be paid or shipped to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to the company's marketing manager, Mike Pryor.
Johns Hopkins University Infographic: Clarín
"I hope by God they don't need my order and they cancel it," Pryor said in a text message exchange with NBC News.
The contracts for the purchase of body bags presented by Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs are just a sample of how Trump's confidence in the nation's willingness to reopen is in conflict with the views of officials of his own management who are quietly preparing for a much worse outcome.
Around the same time that it signed the contract for the body bags, FEMA launched a tender to provide around 200 refrigerated trailers for sites across the country.
The request specifies a preference for 53-foot or 16-meter trailers, ie the largest in its class.
What is Coronavirus? How is it spread and what are its symptoms?
Watch the specialDr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House response team against coronavirus, presented on March 29 models that projected between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths of Americans, assuming that the application of social distancing measures will continue.
At the same time, Birx said epidemiological models had initially predicted a worse scenario of between 1.5 million and 2.2 million deaths without mitigation actions such as social distancing, hand washing, and staying home as much as possible.
Paramedics remove a body from a refrigerated truck in New York. / AFP
Soon after, Trump began to conjecture that the 100,000 figure was the highest limit . Then it leaned further towards the 60,000 projection.
"The minimum number was 100,000 lives, and I think we will be considerably below that number, '' said the president on April 10." It is difficult to believe that if you had 60,000 ... you would never be happy, but it is much less than what we were originally told and thought. ''
With information from ANSA, AP and NBC News