FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn refused to support a claim made by President Trump that 99 percent of coronavirus cases are “totally harmless,” a statement Trump made Saturday, according to a summary of an interview Hahn did on ABC’s “This Week.”
According to a summary by Politico, host Martha Raddatz pressed Hahn about Trump’s statement after he avoided answer the question when first asked. Raddatz followed up: “I want to ask you again, Dr. Hahn. How many cases would you say are harmless?”
“You know, any case, we don’t want to have in this country. This is a very rapidly moving epidemic, rapidly moving pandemic. And any death, any case is tragic. And we want to do everything we can to prevent that,” Hahn replied.
Trump claimed in a Saturday statement: “Now we have tested almost 40 million people … by so doing, we show cases 99 percent of which are totally harmless.”
In fact, of 2.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States as of Sunday at 11:33 a.m. ET, more than 129,000 have ended in fatalities, according to tracking from The Johns Hopkins University. That’s a 4.6% fatality rate, without including people who have suffered long-term health impacts from the disease.