NYT publishes report on Trump's failure in coronavirus response

A recent report by the New York Times has detailed what it said is Trump's failure in handling the U.S.' COVID-19 outbreak, revealing that the president was warned about the potential risks of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the report, Dr. Robert Kadlec, the Department of Health and Human Services' lead on disaster response, met with the White House's coronavirus task force on February 21.

The group conducted a mock-up exercise of the pandemic which predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths. As a result, the group "concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation's economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans."

Instead of conducting a meeting with the task force about the need for social distancing, Trump instead had a briefing on February 26 where he replaced Dr. Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, as the head of the coronavirus task force with Vice President Mike Pence, with a focus on controlling the message so as not to impact the economy, said the report.

(CGTN)